The Managing Director and Chief Executive of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, Akintunde Sawyerr, has debunked claims that the student loan scheme is biased.
Sawyerr noted that it was “completely ridiculous” to make such an allegation.
He also said the electronic process for loan application required basic information such as the student’s name and matriculation number, which, according to him, wasn’t programmed to detect political affiliations.
The NELFUND boss stated this on Sunday during his interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme.
“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. 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. It’s unlikely to yield you any result.
“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,” he said.
Sawyerr, who stated that loan demands had been “overwhelming,” further stressed the transparency of the loan scheme, saying it only grants application requests to students who are deemed worthy of the loan, as he played down any bias in religious or ethnic affiliations.
He explained, “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.
“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.”
On Sunday, the Fund labelled as “fake news” a circulating image claiming that the President had announced life imprisonment for students who fail to repay their education loans after graduation.
The agency administers interest-free loans to eligible Nigerian students in public tertiary institutions to cover institutional fees and provide monthly upkeep allowances.