• Says 84% of beneficiaries in school

There is no truth in a circulating image claiming that President Bola Tinubu had announced life imprisonment for students who fail to repay their education loans after graduation, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has said.

In the meantime, a report on NELFUND said the body was helping to keep students in higher institutions despite rising financial pressures, with 83.7 per cent of beneficiaries saying that support for institutional fees helped them remain in school.

The study, titled “Adoptability and Efficiency of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) Scheme in Southwest Nigeria,” examined students’ awareness of the scheme, application and uptake, disbursement, operational efficiency and their experiences as beneficiaries.

In a post on its official X account yesterday, NELFUND shared the image, with the headline, “Tinubu: All students who fail to repay their loan after graduation will go to jail for life,” which appeared on the front page of a national daily (not The Guardian) on Thursday, May 27, 2027, as doctored and fake.

Meanwhile, in a study of 1,022 students of the University of Ibadan, the new report by the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission found fresh evidence of the impact of the student financing scheme and its potential to expand access to tertiary education.

According to the report, NELFUND awareness among students was almost universal at 99 per cent, while the strongest evidence of its impact, at 83.7 per cent of the applicants, came from beneficiaries.