The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUN), Mr Akintunde Sawyerr, has explained why the Federal Government’s student loan scheme is not restricted exclusively to Nigerians classified as poor or indigent, arguing that parental wealth should not automatically determine a young person’s access to educational support.
Sawyerr said the circumstances confronting individual students could be more complex than their family background, insisting that young Nigerians should be treated as adults capable of making decisions about their education and future.
“You need to start treating Nigerian youths as adults. The fact that they come from a wealthy family, or maybe stand to benefit from a big inheritance, does not preclude them from needing support,” he said.
Sawyerr spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme while responding to questions over how NELFUND determines whether applicants genuinely need financial assistance, particularly concerns that students from wealthy families could benefit from funds intended to expand access to tertiary education.
He illustrated the dilemma with the case of an 18-year-old from a wealthy family whose parents refuse to finance the course the student wants to study.
“If your parents refuse to fund your education, does that mean you don’t go to school?” he asked.
According to him, using the government’s social register of poor Nigerians as the principal mechanism for determining eligibility would not necessarily produce a fairer student-loan system because the register was not designed specifically to capture the circumstances of young people seeking tertiary education.
“We are dealing with young people. The social register that you’re referring to is not just for young people. And the minute we start to tap into the social register, the number of people who are eligible for this loan will diminish significantly,” he said.
Sawyerr said NELFund’s objective was to ensure that young Nigerians who might otherwise be unable to complete tertiary education were not excluded simply because their circumstances did not fit a narrow definition of indigence.
“We are trying to rescue people who are in need, who may not be able to speak up,” he said.
He acknowledged that the broad eligibility approach could mean that some students who could otherwise afford their education might receive support, but argued that preventing such cases at all costs could ultimately hurt a much larger number of genuinely needy students.
“I’d rather pay as NELFund for a handful of students who can afford it if I can carry along a very large number of students who can’t, than deprive a large number of students because I’m trying to stop three or four people from getting it,” Sawyerr said.
He added that no eligibility system could be completely foolproof.
“You can never get a watertight system,” he said, insisting that the priority should be to expand access to tertiary education while continuously improving the system.
Sawyerr’s position also extends to the broader philosophy behind the student-loan programme. He argued that access to the Fund should not simply be viewed as a welfare intervention for poor students, but as an investment in young Nigerians and the country’s future workforce.
He said the fact that beneficiaries would eventually repay the loans could also encourage them to make more deliberate choices about the courses they study and the institutions they attend.
“If you have to pay back money for something that you have borrowed, you are likely to be more considered about the course you are going to take,” he said.
“You are likely to look more closely into what sort of job opportunities there are thereafter.”
According to him, the loan model could consequently create greater attention to employability, skills and the relevance of academic programmes, while encouraging competition among institutions to attract students whose education is being funded through NELFund.
Sawyerr, who disclosed that he had personally taken and repaid a student loan, also rejected the argument that repayment necessarily places an excessive burden on beneficiaries.
“Not a burden at all,” he said when asked whether repaying a student loan had been burdensome.
He explained that repayment is linked to employment, saying beneficiaries are technically expected to begin repayment two years after completing the National Youth Service Corps, provided they have secured employment.
“If they don’t have a job, they don’t pay,” he said, adding that employers are expected to deduct 10 per cent of a beneficiary’s salary for repayment, with deductions stopping if the beneficiary loses the job.
The NELFund boss said the broader access policy had already translated into substantial demand for the programme, with about 1.8 million applications received since its commencement.
He disclosed that 1.659 million applications had been processed, with just under one million students becoming beneficiaries, although he explained that the number of applications was higher because some students applied in successive academic years.
According to him, NELFund had so far disbursed about N355 billion, comprising N162 billion in upkeep payments to students and N192 billion for institutional charges across 319 government-owned tertiary institutions.
The Fund currently spends about N16 billion monthly on upkeep, with beneficiaries receiving N20,000 each month.
Sawyerr said the scale of the intervention was increasingly being assessed not merely by the amount disbursed but by its impact on students’ ability to remain in tertiary institutions.
He cited research which, he said, showed that the scheme had reduced dropout rates by 20 per cent in the previous year, while a separate study by DAWN reportedly found that 84 per cent of beneficiaries were retained within tertiary education because of the intervention.
He maintained that these outcomes strengthened the case for keeping the scheme broadly accessible rather than narrowing it exclusively to students who meet a particular definition of poverty.
The debate over eligibility comes amid criticism from sections of the education sector that government should provide grants and increase direct public investment in tertiary education rather than place young Nigerians under a repayment obligation.
But Sawyerr maintained that the fundamental objective of NELFund was to ensure that financial constraints did not prevent Nigerians from obtaining tertiary education.
For him, the question is therefore not simply whether a beneficiary’s parents are rich or poor, but whether the individual student requires support to access and complete tertiary education, and whether the system can expand opportunity without shutting out those who genuinely need it.
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