NELFUND Moves to Stop Students Collecting Loans While Parents Pay Fees

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced plans to curb cases of students allegedly receiving government-backed education loans while still requesting their parents to pay school fees.

Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed the move during a press briefing on Wednesday, stating that the agency had identified instances of beneficiaries accessing loan support yet continuing to rely on parental funding for tuition payments. According to Sawyerr, the practice undermines the objective of the student loan programme and will no longer be tolerated.

“We have discovered that many students are double-dipping. They benefit from NELFUND and still place the burden of tuition payments on their parents. We are going to put an end to that,” he said. As part of efforts to improve transparency, NELFUND plans to introduce a system that will allow parents to verify whether their children's tuition fees have been paid through the loan scheme. While parents may not be able to view the exact amounts disbursed, the verification mechanism will confirm payment status.

The development comes amid ongoing efforts by the Federal Government to widen access to tertiary education through its student loan initiative, which covers institutional fees and also provides separate upkeep allowances for eligible students.

Nationwide Re-Education Campaign

To address misconceptions surrounding the programme, NELFUND will organise re-education workshops across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. Sawyerr explained that the initiative would go beyond conventional awareness campaigns, focusing instead on educating students, parents and tertiary institutions about the operational changes recently introduced by the fund.

“This is not sensitisation. It is re-education of stakeholders and students about the changes we have made in their favour,” he said. He added that the workshops would clarify issues related to tuition payments, upkeep allowances and documentation requirements, while also helping to eliminate confusion among beneficiaries and participating institutions.

Providing further details on the loan payment system, NELFUND’s Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, said the agency currently processes transactions using students’ application identification numbers and wallet numbers rather than traditional bank account details.

He explained that tuition payments are handled separately from upkeep allowances, which are transferred directly to beneficiaries through payment platforms such as NIBSS Instant Payments and Paystack. According to Iyal, delays in upkeep disbursements may occasionally occur because external financial institutions are involved in the payment process.

Highlighting the scale of operations, he disclosed that about 400,000 students have been captured in the pilot phase of the payment system, with roughly 20,000 new beneficiaries added within a week. He added that nearly 5,000 student transactions are processed daily.

Iyal noted that the platform uses a tokenised system linked to each applicant’s unique identification number, ensuring that tuition payments made to institutions remain distinct from allowances paid directly to students. The latest measures, according to NELFUND, are aimed at strengthening accountability, improving transparency and ensuring that the student loan programme benefits those for whom it was intended.