The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced plans to curb alleged cases of students benefiting from its loan scheme while still relying on their parents to pay their tuition fees.
The fund’s Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, said on Wednesday that a verification system would be introduced to enable parents to confirm whether NELFUND had paid their children’s school fees.
Speaking during a press briefing, Sawyerr said the measure was aimed at ending the practice of beneficiaries allegedly collecting government-backed education loans while continuing to place the burden of tuition payments on their parents.
“This comment is based on our recognition that there are so many students out there who are double-dipping. They are taking from the NELFUND and still stressing their parents,” he said.
“We are going to put an end to that.”
Under the proposed arrangement, parents would be able to verify whether their children’s tuition fees had been paid through NELFUND without necessarily accessing details of the amounts involved.
The move comes as the Federal Government continues to expand the student loan programme, designed to reduce financial barriers to tertiary education and help eligible students meet institutional charges.
NELFUND provides loans for approved school fees, while upkeep allowances are processed separately to support beneficiaries’ living expenses.
To address confusion over the payment process, the fund will also organise re-education workshops across the six geopolitical zones, targeting students, parents, and tertiary institutions.
Sawyerr said the exercise would explain changes to the scheme and clarify the procedures for accessing loans and receiving payments.
“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.
He urged the media to support the campaign, noting that the workshops alone might not reach every beneficiary requiring clarification.
Meanwhile, NELFUND Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, explained that the fund uses students’ application identification numbers and associated wallet numbers to process institutional payments rather than their conventional bank account numbers.
He said tuition payments were handled separately from upkeep allowances, which were transferred to beneficiaries’ personal bank accounts through external payment platforms, including NIBSS Instant Payments and Paystack.
According to Iyal, NELFUND relies on these platforms because it is not a banking institution and cannot open bank accounts for beneficiaries. He added that delays could occur during upkeep transactions, depending on the financial institutions involved.
Providing an update on the scheme, Iyal said its pilot phase covered about 400,000 students, with approximately 20,000 additional students recorded between the previous week and the week of the briefing.
He added that the payment system processed transactions for nearly 5,000 students daily.
Iyal further explained that each student’s application identification number was linked to a wallet, with the upkeep arrangement operating separately from the mechanism used to pay institutional fees.
The proposed parental verification system and regional workshops are expected to improve transparency, clarify payment procedures, and strengthen accountability in the administration of the student loan programme.
