Chidimma Uchegbu
The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced that over half a million students have registered on its portal to benefit from the loan scheme. According to NELFUND’s Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, the fund has received an average of 1,800 loan applications daily since its launch.
Sawyerr made this disclosure during a Stakeholders Engagement Session and Technical Workshop on NELFUND System Automation and Loan Application Processes in Abuja.
He emphasized that the workshop aimed to address observed gaps in the loan application process and improve the overall efficiency of the system.
The NELFUND boss highlighted that the loan scheme’s objective goes beyond providing financial assistance to students but also aims to democratize opportunities for young Nigerians from all backgrounds.
He noted that the fund has received over 570,000 registrations, with more than 515,000 students actually applying for loans.
“This is the gap we’re here to close. But we know we can’t do it alone. This is a shared mission. It belongs to all of us, government, institutions, and the private sector alike.
“This technical workshop marks a major step forward. We’re not only providing financing we’re building a technology driven system that makes it easier for students to apply, for institutions to verify, and for funds to be disbursed with speed, fairness, and accountability”.
Speaking on some of the perceived challenges and how they hope to close the gaps, the NELFund Boss said, “You know, when you launch a project of this magnitude, what you do is to do all the preparation you can, then you launch it into the marketplace, if I can use that expression, and then you see the reaction, the level of engagement, the issues, and then you make a plan as to how you’re going to make it better.
“So we’re doing this now because, yes, we want to improve what we have already, but we’re going to do this every so often so that, you know, as we discover new things, new technology, new opportunities, new challenges, new problems, we can address everything in one go”.
The MD also explained that accessing the loan is quite easy provided the students follow the right steps without compromising on accurate data about their educational pursuits.
His words, “From our perspective, as long as they have accessed the institution using JAMB, they can access the loan.
“Now, it’s a loan, so people have to make decisions as to the point at which they want to engage with the loan. What do I mean by that? You know, when you’re taking a loan, you can’t take too many of them in any instance.
“So what you do is, you choose the right course, you choose the right institution, you choose, the things that you believe will help you progress, and then you make that decision. That’s an individual decision. It’s not about just coming and taking the loan.
“It’s about taking the loan for something that you believe will help further your own position educationally and in life. How fast do you process your loan application? As fast as it is safe for the fund. So what I want to be clear on is that in as much as we want to process the loans as quickly as possible, we’re also managing government money.
“We’re managing stakeholders’ funds. So we try to carry out proper checks. We don’t want to be in a situation where we say we’ll give you a loan in 10 days, and then we discover that some of the loan applications are faulty, and then we can’t do it.
“We don’t want people coming here just for the speed of it. We also have to carry out our due diligence and our own checks”.
Also commenting on the level of beneficiaries so far, he said, “We have about 570,000 registrations, and I’ll just quickly define that.
“A registration is when somebody comes to the loan site and puts in all their details, but they don’t go to the next or final step of actually applying for a loan. We have about 570,000 of those. I think as of today, we’ve probably got about 515,000 applications, people who’ve actually pressed the button that says, I’m applying for this loan.
The NELFUND MD expressed satisfaction with the level of engagement and participation in the loan scheme, noting that over half a million students have applied for loans within 11 months.
