Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has said the agency has disbursed N85 billion to support 449,000 students nationwide.
Speaking on the progress of the loan scheme on Prime Time, an Arise Television programme, on Tuesday, Sawyer said the beneficiaries were from 218 federal and state tertiary institutions.
He added that of the total disbursed amount, N47 billion was paid directly to the institutions to for tuition fees, while N38 billion was allocated as upkeep allowances for students.
“As of this morning, we have 733,000 students who have registered for the loan. A total of 734,000 have applied for the loan, and today, we have 449,000 beneficiaries – these are people who have had their fees paid and, in some cases, have had their fees and upkeep provided to them,” Sawyerr said.
“The 449,000 beneficiaries are from 218 institutions, tertiary institutions at the federal or state level. Also, N47 billion has been paid to those institutions on behalf of the beneficiaries. The upkeep pay so far is N38 billion.”
Sawyerr said NELFUND has implemented systems requiring borrowers to provide bank verification numbers (BVN), enabling the tracking of active bank accounts.
“We have put systems in place to ensure that we are giving these loans to people we can identify and find. The BVN requirement means we can track their bank accounts to see if the accounts are active or inactive,” he said.
On loan repayment, Sawyerr explained that there is no direct obligation on students to repay the loans; instead, repayment responsibility lies with employers.
He said when hiring, employers are expected to check a database to determine if a prospective employee has an outstanding NELFUND loan.
He said this arrangement was carefully designed by the president to avoid penalising students seeking education through loans.
“In terms of loan recovery, there is no obligation [on the students]; the president was very careful with this. He didn’t want students to be penalised for taking a loan to get an education,” he said.
“So the obligation to pay the money back is on the employer. When an employer employs, they go to a database to identify whether the person they are employing has a loan with NELFUND or not.
“If they have a loan with NELFUND, the employer is advised to deduct 10 percent with the permission and consent of the employee. 10 percent of salaries or wages can then be remitted to the NELFUND account. The obligation is on the employer, not the loanee, unless the loanee is now self employed.”