State universities’ students to benefit from Nigerian govt’s loan scheme

The Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, Akintunde Sawyerr, has said the scheme will be made available to students of state universities in the next three weeks.

Sawyerr revealed this during an ongoing press briefing in Abuja on Thursday.

The website of the student loan fund has received over 60,000 visitors since its launch.

Sawyerr also noted that over 90% of federal institutions have submitted the list of students, noting that only two federal universities and two federal polytechnics are yet to do so.

On June 12, 2023, President Bola Tinubu signed the Access to Higher Education Act, 2023 into law to enable indigent students to access interest-free loans for their educational pursuits in any Nigerian tertiary institution.

The move was in “fulfillment of one of his campaign promises to liberalise funding of education,” a member of the then Presidential Strategy Team, Dele Alake, said.

The Act, popularly known as the Students Loan Law, also established the Nigerian Education Loan Fund to process all loan requests, grants, disbursement, and recovery.

Although the government initially announced that the scheme would be launched in September, it suffered several delays leading to an indefinite postponement in early March.