Students who take NELFUND loans while their parents still pay their fees will soon be caught out, the fund says.
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, announced this at a press briefing on Wednesday.
He said the fund had found cases of students who allegedly receive support from the scheme while still relying on their parents for tuition.
Sawyerr called the practice “double-dipping”.
“We are going to put an end to that,” he added.
He said the cases had led to plans to strengthen openness in the scheme and to educate students, parents and schools about changes to the payment system.
The fund will create a way for parents to confirm whether their children’s fees have been paid, without seeing the amount.
According to him, this will give clarity to parents who remain responsible for their children’s education.
NELFUND was set up to give loans to Nigerian students in tertiary institutions.
Re-Education Workshops Planned
The Federal Government created the student loan scheme to reduce financial barriers to higher education.
Under the scheme, NELFUND pays institutional fees through loans.
Upkeep allowances are processed separately to cover living costs.
The process needs coordination between the fund, schools and financial service providers.
Sawyerr said NELFUND will hold re-education workshops across the six geopolitical zones.
He said they differ from the fund’s usual sensitisation events, which tell students the scheme exists.
“We can easily do a press release and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing.’ But if we don’t educate the institutions, if we don’t educate the students, everybody will still be running behind,” he said.
“This is not sensitisation. This is re-education of the stakeholders and the students as to the changes that we have made in their favour,” Sawyerr added.
He said the fund might invite journalists to some of the workshops.
He also called on the media to spread the information, since the workshops may not reach every student.
How The Payment System Works
Meanwhile, NELFUND’s Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, said the fund designed its system to limit middlemen in fee payments.
He said institutional payments use students’ application identification numbers and wallet numbers, not bank account numbers.
“To be clear, we don’t use account numbers. We use their application ID and wallet number,” he said.
Upkeep allowances are handled differently.
They go to students’ personal bank accounts.
According to him, NELFUND uses the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) Instant Payments and Paystack for upkeep, because the fund is not a bank and cannot open accounts for students.
He said these outside channels can sometimes cause delays.
Iyal said the pilot phase involved about 400,000 students.
About 20,000 more were recorded between the previous week and the week of the briefing.
The system processed transactions for almost 5,000 students daily.
“We are not talking about 20,000. No, we are talking about 400,000,” he said.
Receipts And Student Records
Iyal said the system uses a token linked to each student’s application number.
A wallet is attached to each application.
The upkeep wallet works separately from the one used for institutional payments.
He also said students can already download receipts from the NELFUND platform after fees are processed.
“Presently, on the NELFUND system, when they pay, they can download a receipt. We have that already,” he said.
However, he said receipts from the fund differ from those issued by schools.
Institutions keep their own systems for receipts and for the clearance needed for departmental registration and other academic steps.
The clarification comes as the fund seeks to improve understanding of institutional payments, upkeep allowances and the documents students need for registration.
