Students Loan Scheme: Wahala as FG fails to meet January deadline

President Bola Tinubu signed a measure into law in June 2023 that offers interest-free education loans to Nigerians who pursue higher education.

The government then guaranteed that the loan would be available to Nigerian students starting in January 2024.

“By January 2024, the new student loan must commence. To the future of our children and students, we are saying no more strikes,” Tinubu said while assuring students that indefinite strikes will soon be a thing of the past.

The Students Loan Act, also known as the Access to Higher Education Act, 2023, created the Education Loan Fund to assist Nigerians in financing their post-secondary education, with payments made in installments two years after participating in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program.

Former House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, who served as Tinubu’s chief of staff, introduced the measure in 2016.

In November 2022, the National Assembly gave the issue additional attention after he reintroduced it in 2019.

In December 2023, the Minister of State for Education, Dr. Yusuf Tanko Sununu, who affirmed Tinubu’s declaration that the Students Loan Scheme would commence in January 2024, said: “I want to tell you that we are on track. The committee is working day in and day out.

“The whole thing is going to be online, not through physical access. A website that will make for easy access is being developed.”

Nevertheless, ZINGTIE notes that as January has passed, there is no indication that the program will begin.

The National Association of Nigerian Students, or NANS, is worried that it hasn’t started despite government guarantees, according to Chinoso Obasi, a former national president of the organization.

Obasi stated that the government may have just announced the plan’s non-implementation to give Nigerians the impression that it was functioning, so it was not shocking when it was not implemented in January.

Speaking with ZINGTIE, he said: “The Federal Government budgeted N50 billion for the execution of its Students Loan Scheme in 2024. This was stated in the budget appropriation information for 2024.

“This Bill started with Gbajabiamila in 2015 when it was first presented; before then, this loan was the recommendation of the 2014 National Confab where I was a student delegate.

“It was part of our recommendation. Though the Confab was under the PDP, the APC has been implementing part of the recommendation without giving credit to the source.

“The president had said by 2024 January the loan scheme will become active but here we are in February, nothing yet.

“I’m a Nigerian student doing my postgraduate studies and in touch with all Nigerian students across the country and I’m sure the programme has not commenced.

“I’m not shocked because there are some things the government says to get public sympathy or the president says to make people feel they are on top of their game. That the loan has not been implemented is not in any way a shock or surprise to someone like me.

“It was the same scenario with the COVID-19 palliative; how many Nigerians got it? So, it is not a surprise that the loan scheme has not come into reality.

“We pray that the president will understand that Nigerian students are eager to start benefiting from the loan.

“The loan will eliminate the suffering in the education sector, though there are lots of pros and cons in the scheme. A situation like the payback plan where the government says it’s two years upon your graduation and NYSC, they will start deducting 10 percent of your income.

“It would have been more honourable to say that as long as the government provides you the loan, they should get you a job that will facilitate the payment.

“When you say two years after NYSC they should start paying back the loan, do you have means of getting them a job?

“A lot of Nigerian students have graduated from the tertiary institution for over 10 years without a job. There are a lot of issues to be talked about but let the implementation commence, the lack of commencement at this moment is the biggest challenge.”

The NANS President, Lucky Emonefe, expressed regret that the loan’s governing authorities had declined to confer with student leaders.

He insisted that the scheme’s overseeing government officials had failed to fulfil their obligations.

Addressing ZINGTIE, Emonefe stated: “Mr. President is committed to the scheme and has expanded the loan scheme.

“The only challenge I’m having is that those charged with the responsibility have not lived up to it.

“The Executive Secretary of the loan board was supposed to carry out a stakeholders’ consultation. You want to disburse loans, won’t you meet with the students’ leaders? This is the challenge we are having.

“Mr President said he has expanded it, which is a good one; he has directed the federal Inland Revenue to mobilise, they should consult us. Are they giving the money to animals? No, so they should meet the students first.

“We are yet to meet with them, for them to kick-start the scheme, they must meet with us. They should step up their plans by meeting with the students’ leaders to fast-track things.”

On the repayment clause in the scheme, he said: “The government should look into that. I think the government should give the students about three to five years because unemployment is an issue.

“When we spoke against some of the conditions, the government removed the rigid issue of surety, a perm Sec; that bottleneck was removed.

“When there’s a job after two years, the government will monitor the repayment plan.”

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