Student loan system can’t detect party affiliation — NELFUND

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has dismissed allegations that its student loan scheme favours applicants based on their political, ethnic or religious affiliations.

NELFUND Managing Director and Chief Executive, Akintunde Sawyerr, described the allegation as “completely ridiculous”, insisting that the system used to process applications has no mechanism for determining a student’s political allegiance.

Sawyerr spoke on Sunday during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, where he explained that applicants are required to submit basic academic and personal details, including their names and matriculation numbers.

He questioned how the agency could determine whether a student belongs to a particular political party, especially when many beneficiaries are yet to vote or are not members of any political organisation.

“I have not heard this allegation, but I can tell you that it’s a completely ridiculous idea that the administration of Bola Tinubu is focused on trying to fund people who support the party,” he said.

“We are talking about students; many of them are yet to vote, some of them are going to be voting for the first time, [and] many of them are not party members.

“How, in any event, do we determine who is a party member and who isn’t? Even if you are running a manual process, how do you do that? You can’t.”

According to the NELFUND chief, the electronic nature of the application process further makes political profiling impractical, as the system is designed around eligibility requirements rather than political identity.

“It is a process you have to apply for this loan electronically. If you don’t have a name, you can’t apply for this loan. You provide your matriculation number; you have to be in a public institution,” Sawyerr explained.

He said demand for the loans had been “overwhelming”, but maintained that applications were assessed based on established eligibility criteria.

Sawyerr also rejected suggestions that the scheme discriminates on the basis of ethnicity, religion or gender, saying the system was designed to focus solely on whether applicants were Nigerians who met the required standards.

“We have a system that is focused on people who are Nigerians and meet the standard. The system doesn’t recognise your gender. There is no bias in the system at the front end or the back end,” he said.

“This is a system that doesn’t care whether you are of one tribe or the other. This system does not have a view or an opinion on whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, or an African traditional religionist; it doesn’t want to know.”

Meanwhile, NELFUND on Sunday dismissed as “fake news” an image circulating online claiming that President Bola Tinubu had approved life imprisonment for students who fail to repay their education loans after graduation.

The Fund provides interest-free loans to eligible Nigerian students enrolled in public tertiary institutions, covering institutional fees and monthly upkeep allowances.