The Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has hinted that the student loan programme might be expanded to private tertiary institutions in Nigeria in three years.
Sawyerr stated this during a strategic engagement and sensitisation campaign with heads of institutions and other stakeholders in Enugu on Thursday.
Elder statesman and founder, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Aare Afe Babalola; the Vice Chancellor, Joseph Ayo Babalola University (JABU), Osun State, Prof. Olasebikan Fakoloju, and other stakeholders urged the government to allow students of private universities to benefit from the student loan scheme.
While emphasising the need to first address the pressing demands of students in public universities and colleges, Sawyerr noted that the long-term goal is to ensure all Nigerian students, regardless of institution type, have access to financial support for their education.
He said: “We have only been going for one year. We need to really address the public sector first. These loans allow students to otherwise drop out for very small amounts of money.
“The students that we see in the public sector don’t even have the option in most cases to go to the private sector, and some of them are dropping out. So we want to address that, make sure that we’ve got them covered.
“And then when we see after a while, I think two, three years max, when we see the effect this has had on the generality of youth in Nigeria, we can then do some sort of review to see what it might mean for moving to the private sector segment.”
He said the only challenges the fund has are the usual ones, which include misunderstanding, misinformation, people not being sure, or feeling that it’s designed not to work for them, or that something is stopping them.
“They just have a normal problem like everybody else has with technology, and then they say, this has been rigged against us. But we’re here. We’re not here to waste our time. We’re here to help the people apply and get institutions to also take part.”
On his part, Special Adviser on Education Innovation to the Enugu State Governor, Dr. Chinyere Onyeisi, emphasised the importance of the loan, citing the vast and attention-demanding nature of the education sector.
