To access the current student loans in Nigeria, the agency in charge of student aid wants to be sure that you are truly what you claim to be.
Anyone can claim to be an undergraduate student, but what the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) uses to differentiate a fake student from an authentic student is a matriculation number (matric no. for short).
If you are in 100 level, ND 1, or HND 1, don’t even bother applying for the student loan because you will be unable to apply for the loan if you’re yet to get a matriculation number, one of the key requirements to access the education aid.
Who is to blame?
The blame lies with the management of the institutions and not with NELFUND.
Some time ago, NELFUND boss Akintunde Sawyerr urged authorities in higher institutions to upload details of their students on the NELFUND portal on time to make applications seamless for their students.
Giving a matriculation number to a student after paying the acceptance fee is possible. However, institutions across Nigeria still adhere to the seemingly archaic way of issuing matriculation numbers—a prerequisite to access the education loan—meaning students must pay their tuition fee before they can be given a matriculation number, thereby defeating the purpose of the student aid.
This also means that a student who is running a four-year program can only access the loan for three academic sessions. For an HND student, they can only access it for just one academic session instead of two.
What happens if such a student doesn’t have the financial capacity to fund their first year in ND, HND 1, or 100 level fees.
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