By Opeyemi Quadri 
The Managing Director/CEO of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has described as allegation the statement credited to the South East caucus of the National Assembly that south east tertiary institutions were excluded from the ongoing student loans.
Reacting to the allegation on News Central on Monday, the NELFUND boss said the initiative is an equal opportunity that seeks to attract every undergraduate student in Nigeria regardless of their state of origin or their geopolitical zone.
“We are not excluding any part of the country from access to the loan. This is an equal opportunity project. It seeks to attract people from every part of this country” he explained.
Recall that Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe the Leader of the South East Senate Caucus of the National Assembly alleged on Sunday that there were no beneficiaries from the region from the N2,946,927,155, that have been disbursed to 27,667 students in 19 institutions across the country.
But Sawyerr said the non-inclusion of the institutions based in the Southeast was the fault of their management that failed to send their data or confirm their data of their students, a prerequisite for disbursement.
“What is really happening is that we have a process we must follow. First, we are managing public funds. Secondly, we can’t force people to take loans.
“Thirdly, we need the cooperation of the institutions for verification. We opened up a portal when there is no human intervention whatsoever. The portal doesn’t know where you are from.
“Obviously, we captured some data like state of origin, we don’t use it for assessment, we use it to ensure that we can track being an equal opportunity programme.
Explaining how the loans are disbursed, he said, “When people approach the portal and they become successful we pile the list of those who have succeeded getting a loan getting their application approved. We send that list to relevant institutions for them to confirm that the loan we are going to pay to the beneficiaries are indeed their students.”
Why are Southeast-based institutions not on the list?
“There are two issues. Students from the Southeast study everywhere in the country. We have students from the southeast who are found in the North, in the West, they are everywhere. And some of them are beneficiaries of the loan.
“The real issue we have here is that institutions need to confirm to us that the students are theirs. The second part of the issue is when they do apply and we provide information to all the institutions that verify this list.
“We don’t get a response, we don’t disburse. If they don’t respond in time, obviously we are not going to hold other applications.”
Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka has already admitted that the delay was due to the check it had to carry out on the students that applied and approved by the Fund.
Why there are more beneficiaries from the North
He explained that “Some parts of the country are quick in responding. Some institutions have been quick in responding. We don’t interfere in the process.”
In one of his interactions with the media, the NELFUND boss had said that response from the Northern parts of the country has been encouraging, justifying why more beneficiaries are from the region.
In its list of funds that have been disbursed, University of Maiduguri received N589,001,500, Bayero University, Kano got N853,775,000. Other beneficiaries so far include University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, and University of Ibadan among others.
Sawyerr asked “Will we intentionally exclude an entire region? It’s a loan. KYCs have to be done. The school must say you are their student.”
Findings have also shown that exclusion of institutions based in the Southeast region was because of administrative lapses on their management.
Meanwhile a statement co-signed by Abaribe and Igariwey Iduma Enwo has called on the affected institutions and undergraduate students from their region to comply with the guidelines of the Fund so that “we do not intentionally marginalise ourselves from opportunities which are open to all Nigerians.”
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Anita John