The Managing Director of the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has assured Nigerian students that no eligible beneficiary of the federal education loan scheme will be denied the right to sit for examinations, despite reported cases at some tertiary institutions.
Speaking in an interview with ARISE News on Tuesday, Sawyerr said NELFUND was actively engaging institutions such as the University of Benin (UNIBEN) and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) to resolve verification and disbursement delays, stressing that student welfare remains the agency’s top priority.
“If there’s anything to be stressed or worried about, it is the welfare of the youth in Nigeria. So I welcome the stress, I welcome the worry,” he said.
Concerns had emerged after reports that some final-year students were barred from examinations despite claims that their tuition fees had been paid through NELFUND.
Sawyerr clarified that the scheme, introduced by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was designed to remove financial barriers to tertiary education through interest-free loans with flexible repayment terms.
“We started the scheme of His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, to provide students with loans — interest-free loans, with very, very soft terms — to ensure that the situation we’ve had in this country for so long, where so many cannot commence tertiary education or are forced to drop out because of lack of funds, is addressed.”
He explained that while NELFUND was committed to swift disbursement, government funding required strict institutional processes to prevent misappropriation.
“Because these systems require proper processes when you’re disbursing government funds, it is important that we use the processes we’ve designed and approved to ensure that we don’t have any sort of misappropriation of these funds.”
Sawyerr outlined the scale and complexity of the programme, noting that NELFUND had already disbursed funds to hundreds of institutions nationwide.
“To date, we’ve paid 265 tertiary institutions. We have about 1.5 million applications being processed, and we have just under a million beneficiaries that we are paying money to every month.”
He added that varying institutional calendars posed operational challenges.
“Students apply when they choose to apply — we don’t enforce an application date. Universities, polytechnics and colleges of education all set their own registration dates and examination dates, and those differ across the country.”
On verification delays, particularly at LAUTECH,
Sawyerr said institutions were required to confirm beneficiary lists before funds could be released.
“There is a verification process which we conduct. We batch applications by institution, send them to the institutions, and we expect them to verify that list of students. In the case of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, over 12,000 students had to be verified and sent back to us.”
He acknowledged that the programme’s success had increased its complexity.
“The more successful we are in bringing institutions on board and students on board, the more complex it gets. So we are in the game of catch-up.”
Sawyerr said NELFUND had appealed to institutions to allow affected students to sit for examinations while verification and payment processes were being completed.
“What we’ve been able to do is negotiate very ably with many institutions to say, if the students applied late or verification was delayed, please allow the students to write their exams.”
Responding to questions about whether there had been communication failures with institutions such as LAUTECH and UNIBEN, Akintunde dismissed the suggestion.
“No, absolutely none of that. As I explained earlier, there are multiple deadlines, multiple applications. It’s never going to be perfectly in sync.”
He said NELFUND remained in constant communication with institutions nationwide.
“We are in constant conversation with all the institutions about the students — about their welfare, their fees, how many we’ve verified and how many we’ve confirmed.”
Sawyerr added that institutions were increasingly cooperative, reassured that payments would eventually be made.
“The institutions are now somewhat assured that the payment will come, so they are very amenable.”
He also revealed a surge in new applications as confidence in the scheme grows.
“In the last 24 hours alone, we’ve had about 8,000 applications.”
Providing updated figures, he said:
“We have 1.5 million plus applications in our system at the moment, and just under one million beneficiaries.”
Sawyerr concluded by reiterating NELFUND’s commitment to transparency and accountability.
“What we are here to do is to ensure that students who have the capacity and desire to remain in school can stay until they graduate and have access to education.”
Boluwatife Enome
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