The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has commenced investigations into about 34 tertiary institutions over allegations that they failed to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the Federal Government’s student loan programme.
Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Sunday, explaining that the agency launched the probe following numerous complaints from affected students.
According to him, the investigations are being conducted in collaboration with anti-corruption agencies, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), internal auditors and other relevant stakeholders.
“I can tell you that there are about 34 institutions that we are looking at at the moment to see what’s going on because the number of petitions we’ve received,” Sawyerr said.
He explained that the problem originated when President Bola Tinubu directed that the student loan programme begin midway through an academic session.
As a result, many students had already paid their tuition fees before later benefiting from NELFUND loans, leading to duplicate payments to several institutions.
“What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment. Some from the students, some from us.
“The refund process is entirely out of our hands. It is the recipient of the double payments that are obliged to make refunds to the students,” he explained.
Sawyerr noted that many students urgently need the refunds because they or their parents borrowed money to settle tuition fees before receiving the government-backed loans.
“Most students in this country are hard up. They don’t have enough money for themselves.
“So when they make payment for their education and then they take a loan for the same education, they expect their money to be refunded to them.
“Some of them have borrowed the funds, their parents have borrowed the funds, and they need to repay those funds,” he said.
The NELFUND boss acknowledged that while some institutions had promptly refunded the affected students, others had failed to do so.
“Some have been very good at this. Others haven’t been so good at it.
“I reserve judgement on, you know, the intentionality around it because for some of them, they just didn’t have the process to make refunds,” he added.
To prevent similar issues in the future, Sawyerr revealed that NELFUND is developing a token-based payment system that will enable students to electronically authorise tuition payments directly to their institutions.
“We’re looking at a tokenised system where the student has the funds effectively as a token on their telephone and when they go to the bursary, they can effectively push a button that makes the payment,” he said.
He explained that the agency deliberately pays tuition fees directly to institutions rather than students to minimise the possibility of funds being diverted for other purposes.
“We chose in our setting up of this not to pay students directly for the loans because that would take us into an entirely new area.
“Paying the funds to the students rather, quite significant, could really lead to the temptation for them to divert and do other things,” Sawyerr stated.
The managing director, however, admitted that NELFUND lacks the legal authority to compel institutions to issue refunds or prosecute offenders.
“We don’t have the powers of arrest, we don’t have powers of prosecution. We really, our hands are tied in that regard,” he said.
According to him, many frustrated students have submitted complaints directly to NELFUND while also petitioning anti-corruption agencies.
“Students who are frustrated and unable to get their refunds write to us, but they also write to the EFCC, to the ICPC,” he disclosed.
Sawyerr further revealed that one of the ongoing investigations involves a five-member team made up of NELFUND officials, internal auditors, representatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), anti-corruption personnel and officials of NANS.
“A five-person team have gone out to a specific institution that’s been accused of this to go and do an investigation,” he said.
Addressing concerns over rising tuition fees, Sawyerr stated that NELFUND had refused to pay institutions that increased their fees excessively after the introduction of the student loan scheme.
“Some schools, because they get paid easily started to put up their fees, we refused, point blank, to pay institutions who had hiked their fees beyond a certain level,” he said.
He stressed that the agency remains committed to transparency and continuous improvement while investigations continue.
“We tend to take the view that perhaps it’s not intentional.
“We institute many investigations, we generate many reports, any small hint of anything going wrong, we set up a small committee to look at it because we’re trying to learn,” Sawyerr concluded.
