The Managing Director/CEO of Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyer, speaks with FRANK IKPEFAN on when the student loan scheme would take off, among others.
Now that the amended bill has been signed by the President, when would beneficiaries start accessing the funds?
There are two things going on right now for beneficiaries to access the funds. First of all, there is access to applications and then there is access to institutions to get educated. It is our intention to begin to allow people to apply for this student loan in the next few weeks.
Is there no specific date when the scheme will kick off?
No. Within the next few weeks we should be able to enable applications. We still have to do a lot of sensitisation, show people how to apply, and what to do when the portal is opened. We are going to go through that exercise. That has changed a little because of the reenactment of the bill, it changed the date in terms of eligibility. We are trying to ensure that we reflect these changes in the application.
What are the specific changes in the new act?
In the previous bill, there was a requirement that if a family or household was earning more than N500, 000 per annum they will not be eligible to access the loan. That provision has been removed because it wasn’t realistic. There are many families who are earning N1m per year. So it is not realistic because of the number of children and the institution they want to go to. That has been removed completely. There was also an onerous requirement for guarantors where if you didn’t have a specific category of guarantor, you couldn’t apply for the loan. The people who this scheme is really supposed to help don’t have access to those guarantors. These are the two examples.
What do students have to do to start accessing the loan?
To be able to access the loan, the students have to make an application. For them to make an application they need to have their JAMB number, dates of birth, national Identification Number (NIN), their Bank Verification Number, confirmed admission to a specific institution for a specific, on a specific starting date. These are the things they need to have once they make the application. For those who are just starting, we are talking of admission confirmation letters, while for those who are already students, we would need their matriculation details.
How much can a student access?
The Act itself doesn’t give an indication of how much a student can access and that is for a very good reason. In this sort of environment if you put a figure on it and things change – that eligibility change – you are locked in. Currently, it is safe to say that the students will have 100 per cent of their institutional fees covered. Because the idea is that when they apply and they are granted the loan, they should have unfettered access to classes, to seminars, to tutorials, lectures and to examination halls. In order for that to happen, the entirety of the institutional fees must be covered.
So what are the checks you have put in place to ensure that there are no abuses of the scheme?
You know, because it is a technology- based application process, there are risks of attacks from those who want to hack into the system, there are risks of people who want to hack the database to ensure that the list of beneficiaries are not the real people who need the loans. We have put in a number of measures to ensure that the system is well tested and has good cybersecurity protection. We have gathered data from all the institutions to ensure that we are not paying fake or ghost beneficiaries. This is to ensure that we have a clean database.
What mode would the funds be disbursed? Is it through the institutions or students?
For the successful applicants, we will be paying their institutional fees directly to the institutions. We will pay on behalf of the successful applicants the full amount of their fees to their institutions. There will also be stipends paid to the individuals themselves. At a regular interval, the beneficiaries will receive an amount of money for their upkeep so that they can do the basic things – feeding, photocopying handouts, data, Internet searches for their work, and maybe airtime. They can use the stipends to ensure that there is enough opportunity for them to survive the experience of being a student. We all know that students’ survival is on another level; those who get through their education at the tertiary level are a matter of survival.
What is the number of applicants you are looking at starting the scheme with?
We have not set up the numbers of applicants we want. But we are certain that we will get a lot of applications. A lot of people won’t apply for tertiary education if they don’t have the money. Now that there is hope that they will get the funding from another source, we expect the numbers to go up. We are working closely with our data to ensure that we are able to cover the fees for the number of applicants that will apply and we are able to have some buffer. Remember, once we start to pay the fees, the intension is to pay it till they finish; as long as long they keep on registering year in year out and they are meeting all the criteria and eligibility to ensure that they are eligible for the next batch of loans. We will make sure the loans will be paid but we don’t know how many people that will apply. What we do know is that there are limited number of spaces for tertiary institutions. It is about 1.2 million space for public tertiary institutions. We don’t expect that we will pay more than that in the first instance but as time goes on, there will probably be expansion as the tertiary institution increases with requirement for funds.
Does the 1.2m beneficiaries include polytechnics and colleges of education?
It covers all the categories- universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. It doesn’t cover other areas which we are looking into which includes skills acquisition and skills development. That is an area we are looking to try to quantify what is required. That will represent phase 2 of the initiative.
But are there plans to increase the number of benefiting students as the implementation of the scheme progresses?
The institutions have a capacity. So even if 20 million people apply, you still need a certain number of lecturers, seats or spaces within the institution. Today, we are doing 1.2m beneficiaries in public tertiary institutions. The capacity of public tertiary institutions is limited. But without a doubt, it is the intention of President Bola Tinubu to ensure that as many Nigerians get this opportunity as possible. That is why he has vigorously pursued this opportunity on behalf of students. That is why all of us must join hands to ensure that that capacity expansion can happen. This is not going to be an elitist programme. It is a programme that is going to drag as many people into the education net as possible. That is what the President intends and that is what we are going to do.
One of the stakeholders, ASUU has kicked against the programme. Have you been able to convince the lecturers on why they should key into the scheme?
It is important to respect the position of all stakeholders. It is our intention to continue to reach out to them. We have reached out to them already. Because they have a major role to play in education. I just talked about expansion of facilities and I mentioned the number of lecturers we need to grow. We need to have lecturers who are happy, well trained, who are well motivated and we want to carry them along. We want to work with them.
What is the repayment plan of the student loans?
As far as the beneficiaries are concerned, there is no obligation on them to commence repayment of the loan until two years upon the completion of their National Youth Service Corps. The beneficiaries are free to repay the loan before the two years end. Some beneficiaries may be able to repay the loan before then because they have been able to come in touch with some funds or they got a good job. But we have to work with the most difficult situation and the most difficult circumstances. The president in his wisdom gave us a moratorium that allows those who are going to struggle the most to have that time to be able to figure out how they will be able to repay the loan. The truth about it is that if the beneficiaries don’t have jobs they can’t repay the loan and nobody would make them pay. The beneficiaries have to have jobs before they can repay the loan. It is the intention of the scheme that when the beneficiaries have jobs it is the onus of the employers to deduct a percentage of their salaries and pay it into the loan fund. It is not that we are going to gave people going after beneficiaries. No jail term for defaulters. But it is a criminal offence to make a falsehood to get the loan. If anybody lies or put forward a falsehood to get the loan that is a criminal offence. But in terms of the commercial arrangement between the loan fund and the individual, it is a civil contract. So there is no reason to involve the authorities. There is an obligation on the employers to ensure that they deduct as appropriate for those that they are employing. For those who are self employed – because a lot of people may decide not to work for anybody, people like that when they are successful, they will take a share of the profit. We will be able to monitor that. We will monitor to ensure that we protect taxpayers money to ensure that nobody is fooling the system or short-changing the scheme. Part to the terms and conditions of getting the loan is that they sign Global Standing Instruction (GSI) which enables us to access their account not only see what is in the account but also take from the account if we feel that someone who says he is not working but has a lot of money in their account. We will take back the money and recover it for the country.
