The Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, has declared that it is doing everything possible to ensure fairness in the granting and disbursement of loans to students who apply for them across the country.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NELFUND, Mr. Akintunder Sawyerr, made this known on Monday in Lagos at a press briefing.
Speaking against the backdrop of the position that the loan was being more accessed by students in the North than any other part of the country, he said nobody could be forced to take a loan because it had to be refunded.
According to him, the best NELFUND could do was to create a good amount of awareness so that everyone would see the opportunities that abound in it and whosoever was interested would apply for it.
That much, he said, was already being done.
READ ALSO: Why I won’t reduce the size of my cabinet –Tinubu
His words: “This is a loan and you cannot force people to take it because they have to pay back. Some parts of the country are fast in taking the loan than others. What we are doing is to make sure that everybody is aware of the opportunities and the fact around it (the loan) so that they can make informed decisions about what to do.
“If they decide that they don’t want to take the loan, there is nothing we can do.”
Sawyerr said findings had shown that the reluctance to take the loan by some Nigerians in some parts of the country was based on skepticism and cultural factor.
According to him, requesting for loan is not a popular culture in some parts of the country, hence the initial hesitation.
He said things were already changing, however, in recent times, given the amount of awareness being created.
The NELFUND boss said the parts of the country that were said not to be requesting the loan had started picking up and doing well.
He assured that NELFUND would continue to create the awareness so that Nigerians would continue to benefit from the opportunities that abound.
He added: “Our obligation is to go to every nook and cranny of Nigeria and make Nigerians aware of the presence and opportunities to encourage them to take the loan if they need it.
“People in the Northern part of the country had taken it (loan) faster than people in the South….
“But we believe that given the activities put in place, the areas that had been skeptical are now growing faster (in application) than the other parts of the country.
“Our obligation is to create an equal opportunities. Our objective is to ensure fairness, equity in transmission of information to all Nigerians on what it is all about.”
The NELFUND boss spoke about the success rate of the scheme, disclosing that more than 326,000 persons had applied for the loan.
He said N18 billion had been spent on the academic part of the loan while N5 billion had been disbursed so far in the upkeep part of it.
Sawyerr stated too that it was in the bid to ensure that the loans were open to all that might be interested that the registration was made available online.
He said the online application was to eliminate bias.
“You don’t have to know anybody to get the loan,” he said.
Sawyerr reiterated the fact that the loan was interest-free, just as he emphasized that the government was interested in ensuring that no one was denied the opportunity to be educated because of lack of fund.
