The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced that students at tertiary institutions who have successfully applied for the Federal Government’s loan scheme and are starting new academic sessions will begin receiving credit alerts by next week.
“The people who are going to first receive alerts as early as next week are the people who are about to start a new session in the institution they are in,” NELFUND Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, said on Channels TV Wednesday.
He added that other successful applicants will not receive credit alerts until the commencement of academic sessions at their respective institutions.
Sawyerr’s statements came hours after President Bola Tinubu formally launched NELFUND at the State House in Abuja.
He mentioned that 170,000 applicants from universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education now have accounts with NELFUND, but only 110,000 applicants have successfully completed the loan application process.
The NELFUND chief explained that there are two types of beneficiaries: the institutions, which will receive payments on behalf of students who have successfully applied, and the students themselves, who will receive monthly stipends.
“A formal launch of the disbursement circle played out at the State House on Wednesday,” he said.
Sawyerr said the programme was aimed at giving Nigeria “better leadership in the future and improve the socio-economic situation of the country.
“To be precise, about 110,000 students have successfully applied. They’ve put in their applications and verified as being bona fide and eligible applicants. But we’ll still carry out further verification to make sure they are well-qualified to receive these loans. But over 110,000 are likely to begin to receive disbursement from next week.
“It’s one thing to get approval for the loan, it’s another thing to begin to receive value. This loan is for those who are going to be starting institutions afresh or those who are already there,” he said.
Sawyerr pointed out that each of the applicants must have Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registration numbers, matriculation numbers, Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), and National Identification Numbers (NIN), among other requirements.
“Current expenditure to students is about N35bn. We’ve got much more than that sitting in our accounts that we can disburse, and we’ve also got some funding on the way. Remember, we are getting 1% of Federal Inland Revenue Service taxes and we also can receive funding from other sources,” he explained.
