By Adesina Wahab
Parents under the aegis of National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria, NAPTAN, and the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, have offered tips on how to stop the practice of students benefitting from the Student Loan Scheme and still going ahead to collect tuition fees from their parents and guardians.
The practice, labelled double dipping by the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, which gives out the loans, is gradually becoming rampant and erasing the main reason the loan scheme was initiated – take the burden of tuition payment off the necks of parents and guardians.
Speaking with Thursday Learning, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of NAPTAN, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, opined that such a practice negates the reason for the setting up of the scheme.
“The Student Loan Scheme was set up to give access to higher education to students who would otherwise drop out because of inability to pay fees. It is also to take the burden of fee payment off the necks of parents and guardians. Such happenings may not be totally eradicated. We know how rascally some young ones can be.
“I think the way out is to let the parents and guardians be aware when payments are made by NELFUND to beneficiaries. Let there be a means of notifying the parents that their children have benefitted from the scheme,” he said
Similarly, the National Public Relations Officer of NANS, Comrade Obidah David, also supported notification being sent to parents of beneficiaries.
“If it is a text message, they can send to parents and guardians of beneficiaries. Information on contacts of parents is always provided by students when registering. That is necessary in case of any emergency. Also, names of beneficiaries can be published whether in the traditional media or social media. There is nothing bad in that. It is for transparency, “ he stated.
Recall that recently, the Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, said during a press briefing that the fund had identified cases of students allegedly accessing loan support while continuing to place the burden of tuition payments on their parents.
Describing the practice as unacceptable, Sawyerr said the fund was determined to end the situation and strengthen transparency in the administration of the scheme.
“This comment is based on our recognition that there are so many students out there who are double-dipping. They are taking from NELFUND and still stressing their parents. We are going to put an end to that,” he said.
Under the proposed arrangement, parents would be able to confirm whether their children’s school fees had been paid through NELFUND without necessarily having access to the actual amount involved.
Sawyerr said the initiative was intended to address concerns among parents who continued to shoulder the financial responsibilities of their children’s education despite the availability of government-backed loans.
The development comes as the Federal Government intensifies efforts to expand access to tertiary education through the student loan programme, designed to ease financial barriers and prevent eligible students from being denied higher education because of their inability to pay institutional fees upfront.
Under the arrangement, NELFUND provides loans for institutional charges, while upkeep allowances are processed separately to assist beneficiaries with their living expenses.
Sawyerr explained that the exercise would go beyond the fund’s routine public awareness campaigns, which primarily inform students about the availability of the loan scheme.
According to him, the new engagements would focus on educating students, parents and tertiary institutions on how the payment system works and the changes introduced to improve its administration.
“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,” he added.
The managing director said the workshops would help eliminate confusion surrounding institutional payments, upkeep allowances and the documentation required by beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, NELFUND’s Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, provided further insight into the fund’s payment architecture, explaining that the system was designed to minimise intermediaries in the transfer of institutional fees. Iyal said the fund relied on students’ application identification numbers and wallet numbers for institutional payment processing rather than their conventional bank account numbers.
“To be clear, we don’t use account numbers. We use their application ID and wallet number,” he said.
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