The Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has rejected allegations of financial misappropriation at the agency, insisting that no evidence has been presented to substantiate the claims.
Sawyerr made the clarification during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, explaining that NELFUND needs adequate funding to provide loans to students under the Federal Government’s education financing scheme.
He attributed the creation of the fund to the government’s decision to redirect resources previously committed to subsidy towards welfare-oriented programmes.
“There is no evidence of any financial misappropriation by NELFUND. The reality of it is that in order for people to take a loan, there has to be some capital they can draw on.
“The link is that the President, His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has removed subsidy on the one hand and is reassigning the funds that would ordinarily have gone to the top 1% of the 1% and pushing it into welfarist programs, of which NELFUND is one,” Sawyerr said.
The NELFUND chief also challenged concerns about the transparency of the fund’s operations, particularly its disbursement process, saying payments made by the agency are conducted electronically and can be tracked.
He disclosed that NELFUND had recently transferred more than N1 billion to the University of Ibadan, while students receiving upkeep support had their payments sent directly to their bank accounts.
“Again, concluding that 57% of people didn’t find it to the level of transparency that they would like, describing that as opaque, I think is a little bit extreme. But let’s go back and try to understand where we’re coming from with this.
The University of Ibadan students, before NELFUND, probably had a very high dropout rate because they just didn’t have access to capital to go to school.
“Now, the President introduced NELFUND; we paid, I believe, over a billion naira to the University of Ibadan recently. And those funds are transferred directly to the institution. So, where is the opacity in that?
“We transferred the funds directly to the institution and asked the institution to give the students access to classes. We’ve also paid upkeep to the students directly,” he said.
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Sawyerr further explained that the electronic nature of the transactions allows funds to be followed from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to beneficiary institutions or students.
“Now, in those two actions, the transfers of money are done electronically. It’s entirely traceable.
“The money leaves the Central Bank of Nigeria and goes either to the institution, the University of Ibadan, or in the case of upkeep, goes directly to the students in their bank accounts.
“So, I’m struggling to understand where the lack of transparency is. It sounds a little bit like mischief to me. But again, I’d need to interrogate this research that was done,” he said.
System doesn’t recognise ethnicity, connections
On concerns about whether beneficiaries are selected fairly, Sawyerr said the NELFUND application system operates electronically and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, ethnicity or personal connections.
“We receive applications electronically. The system doesn’t recognize whether you’re male, female, whether you’re Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Fulani, Ibibio, or Ogoja.
“As long as you have an NIN, it’s in your favor because it means you’re Nigerian. If you have a JAMB registration number, it means that you’re properly qualified to access the tertiary institution that we deal with,” Sawyerr said.
According to him, applicants must also meet other requirements, including having proof of admission and a bank account through which payments can be made.
“If you’ve got a matriculation number or registration number, it means that you’ve been given admission. If you’ve got a bank account—because we don’t do cash, everything goes through the system—again, it means you qualify, and you’ve got admission in a proper institution,” he said.
Sawyerr maintained that the system is designed to remain neutral in determining who receives the loans, regardless of an applicant’s relationship with NELFUND officials.
“From our perspective, it’s completely agnostic as far as how people are chosen or concerned. It doesn’t care. The system doesn’t care whether you’re friends with the Managing Director or in-laws with the Executive Director. It doesn’t care,” Sawyerr added.