The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced plans to address cases of students allegedly benefiting from its loan scheme, while still relying on their parents to pay their tuition fees.
Key Highlights
- NELFUND says many students are “double-dipping”, taking loans while parents still pay their fees.
- A new system will let parents verify whether their children’s school fees have been paid.
- Stakeholder re-education workshops to hold across the six geopolitical zones.
- School fees are paid using application IDs and wallet numbers, not bank account numbers.
- About 400,000 students covered in the pilot phase of the payment system.
NELFUND Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during a press briefing on Wednesday, saying the fund is working to improve transparency and ensure that stakeholders clearly understand how the student loan programme operates.
He said the fund has identified instances of students receiving support through the scheme, while their parents continued to shoulder the cost of their education.
“This comment is based on our recognition that there are so many students out there who are double-dipping. They are taking from NELFUND and still stressing their parents,” Sawyerr said.
“We are going to put an end to that.”
Parents To Verify Fee Payments
Sawyerr explained that NELFUND plans to introduce a system that would enable parents to verify whether their children’s school fees have been paid without necessarily disclosing the amount involved.
According to him, the initiative is intended to improve transparency for parents who continue to support their children financially while clarifying how payments under the scheme are handled.
The move comes as the federal government continues to implement its student loan programme, which aims to reduce financial barriers to tertiary education by providing eligible students with access to funding.
Under the arrangement, NELFUND covers approved institutional fees, while upkeep allowances are processed separately to assist beneficiaries with their living expenses.
Re-Education Workshops Across Six Zones
Sawyerr said the fund would organise stakeholder re-education workshops across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to explain changes to the payment process and address misconceptions about the scheme.
He distinguished the planned exercise from the fund’s regular sensitisation campaigns, which primarily inform students about the availability of loans.
“We can easily do a press release and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing.’ But if we don’t educate the institutions, if we don’t educate the students, everybody will still be running behind,” he said.
“This is not sensitisation. This is re-education of the stakeholders and the students as to the changes that we have made in their favour,” he added.
The managing director said the workshops would help students and institutions understand the revised procedures, noting that journalists might also be invited to some of the sessions.
He called on media organisations to help spread information about the changes, particularly to students who might not be reached through the regional engagements.
Read also:
- Your Children May Be Receiving NELFUND Loans Without Your Knowledge, Oyedele Says
- Enugu College Reportedly Ties Exam Clearance to NELFUND Loans — Students Cry Foul as NELFUND Insists Scheme Is Voluntary
- NELFUND Says Obtaining Student Loan Is Voluntary, Not Compulsory
How NELFUND Payments Work
NELFUND Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, said the fund has structured its payment system to reduce the involvement of intermediaries in transferring school fees to tertiary institutions.
He explained that the process uses students’ application identification numbers and wallet numbers rather than their bank account details for institutional payments.
“To be clear, we don’t use account numbers. We use their application ID and wallet number,” Iyal said.
He clarified that school fee payments follow a different process from upkeep allowances, which are transferred to beneficiaries’ personal bank accounts through payment service channels.
According to him, NELFUND relies on platforms such as NIBSS Instant Payments and Paystack to process upkeep payments because it is not a banking institution and cannot open bank accounts for students.
He noted that transactions involving external payment channels could sometimes experience delays depending on the financial institutions involved.
Iyal disclosed that the pilot phase of the payment system covered approximately 400,000 students, with about 20,000 additional students recorded between the previous week and the week of the briefing.
He added that the system processed transactions for nearly 5,000 students daily.
“We are not talking about 20,000. No, we are talking about 400,000,” he said, emphasising the scale of the programme.
The executive director explained that the system uses tokenisation linked to each student’s application identification number, with a corresponding wallet attached to the application.
He said the wallet used for upkeep allowances operates separately from the mechanism for paying institutional fees.
Receipts Available On NELFUND Platform
Iyal also clarified that beneficiaries could already download receipts from the NELFUND platform after their school fees had been processed.
“Presently, on the NELFUND system, when they pay, they can download a receipt. We have that already,” he said.
However, he explained that receipts generated through NELFUND were distinct from those issued by individual tertiary institutions, which maintain their own systems for providing payment confirmations and clearance documents required for departmental registration and other academic activities.
The clarification comes as NELFUND continues efforts to improve understanding of its student loan programme, particularly regarding tuition payments, upkeep allowances and the documentation beneficiaries need to complete their academic registration.
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