Students starting fresh session to be paid next week — NELFUND boss

Students of tertiary institutions who have successfully applied for the Federal Government’s loan scheme and are beginning new academic sessions will start receiving credit alerts from next week, the NELFUND Managing Director Akintunde Sawyerr says.

He made this announcement on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday.

“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,” Sawyerr said. 

He added that other successful applicants will receive their credit alerts upon the commencement of academic sessions in their respective institutions.

Sawyerr’s comments followed the launch of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) by President Bola Tinubu at the State House in Abuja. 

According to Sawyerr, 170,000 applicants from universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education have accounts with NELFUND, and 110,000 of these applicants have completed the process.

The NELFUND Managing Director explained that there are two types of beneficiaries: the institutions, which will receive payments on behalf of those who have successfully applied, and the students themselves, who will receive a monthly stipend.

“A formal launch of the disbursement circle played out at the State House on Wednesday,” he said. Sawyerr emphasized that the programme aims to provide Nigeria with “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,” he said.

“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.”

Sawyerr said each of the applicants must have Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) numbers, matric numbers, Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), and National Identification Numbers (NIN), among other requirements.

“Current exposure 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,” the NELFUND boss explained.

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