The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced that tertiary institution students who have successfully applied for the Federal Government’s loan scheme and are commencing new academic sessions will start 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 said other successful applicants won’t begin to receive credit alerts until the commencement of academic sessions in their respective institutions.
Sawyerr’s revelations came hours after President Bola Tinubu formally launched NELFUND at the State House in Abuja.
He said 170,000 applicants from universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education now have accounts with NELFUND but 110,000 applicants have successfully completed the loan application process.
The NELFUND boss said there are two types of beneficiaries, the first being the institutions that would get paid on behalf of those who have successfully applied to go to those institutions, and the second are the students themselves who would receive a 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.