The Managing Director Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has acknowledged delays in disbursing student loans and appealed to institutions across the country to refund students who have already paid their fees while waiting for approval.
The clarification followed rising complaints over late stipend and fee payments under the new student loan scheme.
In an interview with NAN, Sawyerr, explained that the loan process takes time because the Fund must conduct proper verification before approving payments and because institutions, too, must verify applicants before disbursement, which contributes to the processing timeline.
“Part of that due diligence is that the institutions have to verify and confirm to us that the people who applied for the loan and whose names were forwarded to them are their students. They must also verify the approvals and send them back to us,” he said.
He noted that these processes are necessary but time-consuming. As a result, funds sometimes reach schools after their deadlines.
“By the time the confirmation has been done, sometimes, it might not meet the deadline set by the school, and the students might have paid,” he added.
Sawyerr said the Fund has been appealing to schools to return money paid by students whenever NELFUND later pays for the same session.
“Unfortunately, all we can do is to encourage the schools to refund to the students, the money they paid to the school. We cannot force the money out of the schools, but we are encouraging the schools to make refund,” he said.
He added that the Federal Ministry of Education plans to adopt a firmer position to ensure schools refund excess payments promptly.
The NELFUND chief said the Fund would not make retrospective payments to avoid double disbursement. He explained that payments for a previous session must stop once a student applies for a new one.
“If a student applies for the loan in time… the student may receive 12-month upkeep stipend. If another student applies, maybe in the middle of the session, such a student will only receive what is left… We will not pay people backwards,” he said.
He added that once processing for a new session begins, payments from the previous session must stop to prevent double payments.
Sawyerr also clarified that schools input official fee schedules into the student verification system. Students can challenge the amount if it differs from the actual course fee.
“Apart from all the other information that we asked for, the schools, on our student verification system, provide us with the fees for each course. If the fees is N80,000, they load it there as N80,000. If the fee for another course is N200,000, they load it on our system as N200,000. When a student applies for the loan, they can see what amount is uploaded on their portal. If it is higher than what it should be, they can challenge it,” he said.
In the early stages, some schools failed to provide timely data, and the Fund used temporary figures to allow students to apply, which were later corrected.
“We put in some arbitrary figures, so that the system could work and the students could apply for the loan. Then, retrospectively, we went and changed the figures to the actual ones,” Sawyerr recalled.
“We put in some arbitrary figures, so that the system could work and the students could apply for the loan. Then, retrospectively, we went and changed the figures to the actual ones,” Sawyerr recalled.
Sawyerr said several other factors contribute to delays, including late student applications, different academic calendars across institutions, and verification timelines.
“It is not possible to have this kind of scheme without having a complaint somewhere. We receive complaints everyday here, about one thing or the other. When we analyse the complaints, some of them are our fault, some of them are not our fault,” he said.
The complexity of synchronising payments across students at different stages in their academic sessions also adds to the delays.
“Remember that we are dealing with students who are applying at different times, who are at institutions with different timetables, who are at different stages, in terms of where they are in their sessions.
“The complexity of start date, end date, as people graduate, sessions close, a new session begins is not small,” Sawyerr stated.
Sawyerr noted that the scheme is still relatively new, unlike programs that have been running for 10 years or 20 years, and highlighted that coordinating start and end dates, graduations, session closures, and new session commencements adds significant complexity.