The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has expressed serious concern over the steep increase in tuition fees by some tertiary institutions, with reports indicating that 10 schools have raised their fees by as much as 900 per cent.
According to the agency, certain universities that previously charged around ₦200,000 are now demanding as much as ₦2 million for the current academic session.
This revelation was made by the Executive Director of Operations at NELFUND, Mustapha Iyal, during a media interaction in Abuja on Thursday.
Iyal explained that the Fund’s monitoring system detected and blocked such applications. “We have a structure on how we confirm (institutional) fees,” he said.
“I’ll give you an example. Just yesterday (Wednesday), we stopped some applications from going through because we checked the fees that we had last year for certain institutions. Some had like ₦200,000 (last year), but this year, they have like ₦2 million.”
He raised concerns about the rationale behind such dramatic increases, particularly since the loans would eventually need to be repaid by students.
Iyal warned that the development could jeopardize the effectiveness of the student loan scheme and impose significant financial pressure on beneficiaries and their families.
In a related development, NELFUND announced it has disbursed over ₦73.2 billion in student loans to approximately 396,000 students across Nigeria.
Managing Director of the Fund, Akintunde Sawyerr, shared the figures during a media briefing, noting that ₦38.3 billion was allocated for tuition, while ₦34.9 billion covered students’ upkeep.
Sawyerr stated that students from 206 tertiary institutions across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have benefited from the loan programme.
He credited the initiative’s success to the strong leadership and political backing of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He emphasized that the programme was a product of Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and pointed to several achievements of the Fund: the implementation of a fully digital loan application portal, the inclusion of students from technical and vocational institutions, and prompt handling of technical issues related to digital wallets and banking challenges.
