Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr
Student loan: More applicants hopeful as NELFUND credits accounts
More students across several tertiary institutions in Nigeria are optimistic of benefiting from the next batch of disbursements of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Weekend Trust gathered.
The NELFUND, established by the Students Loan Act 2023 is managed and administered by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through the money deposit banks. It aims to facilitate the mobilisation of funds to provide interest-free loans to students of tertiary institutions.
Beneficiaries are expected to begin a repayment process of 10% of their salary to be deducted at source two years after the completion of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), while self-employed beneficiaries are required to remit the same of their monthly profit.
The disbursement of funds is made directly to the institutions bank accounts while successful applicants are entitled to a monthly stipend of N20,000 for upkeep if they so wish.
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Weekend Trust reports that in August, the NELFUND had released data that showed significant regional disparities in the registration, application and disbursement of funds with the South-east recording the lowest figure.
Netizens on X had accused NELFUND of neglecting universities in the South-east but the Fund refuted the claim, saying the management of tertiary institutions in the South-east had failed to respond to verification requests forwarded to them.
North-west leads in disbursement, South-west in institutions
The latest data released by NELFUND on November 7, shows that the South-west has the highest number of beneficiary institutions with 27 currently getting disbursements. This is followed by the North-west which has 18 institutions while the North-east has 16 and the South-south has 15 institutions. The North-central and South-east have 11 institutions each.
On the number of students by zone, the North-west has the highest number of students with 43,378 followed by North-east with 28, 782 and the South-west with 12,539. The North-central has 11,555 beneficiaries while the South-south has 5,837 and South-east has 4,073.
The breakdown of the funding by zones, also shows that the highest of N4,424,024,250 billion was paid to the 18 institutions in the North-west, followed by the16 institutions in the North-east which got N2,544,223,937 billion, then the 27 institutions in the South-west received N1,842,876,713billion. The 11 institutions in the North-central got N1,099,808,700 billion, while the15 in the South-south got N597,250,030 million and the 11 institutions in the South-east received 539,610,320 million.
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