The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) is investigating 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 scheme.
NELFUND Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Sunday, saying the agency acted after receiving numerous complaints and petitions from affected students. He said the investigations are being conducted in collaboration with anti-corruption agencies, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), internal auditors and other stakeholders.
“I can tell you that there are about 34 institutions that we are looking at at the moment because of the number of petitions we’ve received,” Sawyerr said. He explained that the problem stemmed from President Bola Tinubu’s directive to roll out the loan scheme immediately, in the middle of an academic session, rather than waiting for a new academic year. Many students had already paid their tuition before NELFUND separately settled the same fees directly with their institutions, resulting in double payments.
“What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment—some from the students and some from us. The institutions that received the duplicate payments are responsible for refunding the students,” he said.
Sawyerr noted that many affected students urgently need the refunds because they had borrowed from parents, relatives or other sources to pay fees before accessing the loan. While commending some institutions for prompt refunds, he said others had delayed, and NELFUND was still determining whether this was deliberate or due to administrative shortcomings.
To prevent a recurrence, Sawyerr said NELFUND is developing a token-based payment system allowing students to authorise tuition payments directly via mobile phone. He said the agency pays schools directly, rather than students, to prevent diversion of education funds.Sawyerr admitted NELFUND lacks legal authority to compel refunds or prosecute offenders, noting that frustrated students have also petitioned the EFCC and ICPC.
He said a multi-agency team including EFCC, ICPC, NANS and NELFUND’s internal auditors had been deployed to investigate one institution accused of withholding refunds. He added that NELFUND has refused to approve excessive tuition increases by some institutions.
