ABUJA, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)-The Nigerian Education Loan Fund has launched 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 scheme.
Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during an interview on ARISE NEWS on Sunday, saying the agency commenced the probe following a surge in complaints from affected students.
He added that the investigations are being conducted in collaboration with anti-corruption agencies, the National Association of Nigerian Students, internal auditors and other stakeholders.
“I can tell you that there are about 34 institutions that we are looking at the moment to see what’s going on because the number of petitions we’ve received,” Sawyerr said.
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He explained that the issue arose after President Bola Tinubu directed that the student loan scheme begin midway into the academic session, leading some students to pay their tuition fees before later receiving NELFUND loans.
“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,” the NELFUND boss added.
Sawyerr noted that many students rely on the refunds to repay money borrowed by themselves or their families.
“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,” Sawyerr noted.
He said while some institutions had refunded students without delay, 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.”
To address the challenge, Sawyerr disclosed that NELFUND is upgrading its payment platform to enable students authorise tuition payments electronically.
“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,” NELFUND boss declared.
He explained that the agency deliberately pays tuition directly to institutions instead of students to minimise the risk of fund diversion.
“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 acknowledged that NELFUND lacks the legal authority to compel institutions to refund students or prosecute those found culpable.
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“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.
He revealed that many complaints had been submitted directly by affected students, with some also copied to 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.”
According to him, one of the investigations involved a five-member team comprising NELFUND officials, internal auditors, anti-corruption personnel, representatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and 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.
On concerns over tuition fee increases, Sawyerr said NELFUND had refused to pay institutions that raised their fees beyond acceptable limits after the introduction of the student loan scheme.
“Some schools, because they get paid easily startes to put up their fees, we refused, point blank, to pay institutions who had hiked their fees beyond a certain level,” Sawyerr asserted.
He added that the agency was taking a cautious approach while the 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,” he concluded.