The Federal Government has urged tertiary institutions to permit students who applied for the student loan programme to sit for their examinations without any restriction.
It announced the creation of a high-level committee to streamline and standardise fee payment processes across the country’s tertiary institutions. This is to improve the financial operations between universities and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).
The panel is expected to standardise the nomenclature of the charges when NELFUND would disburse institutional loans, and when universities and other institutions would announce disbursements.
Briefing reporters in Abuja yesterday, after meeting with NELFUND, vice chancellors and heads of tertiary institutions accused of misappropriating student loan disbursements, Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, said the panel was given three weeks to submit its report.
He dismissed as untrue allegations by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) that N71.2 billion was missing from the Fund.
Alausa admitted that the removal of the service charge by beneficiary institutions was responsible for allegations of loan deductions by students.
According to him, the difference students are complaining about is the service charge.
He added: “We’re working to better streamline those processes and come up with more standardised guidelines to address those issues,” describing allegations of loan misappropriation by tertiary institutions as ‘communication problems’.
He said the panel would comprise representatives from NELFUND, the Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC), as well as heads of tertiary institutions.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of State for Education, Prof Suwaiba Ahmad, Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, and heads of beneficiary tertiary institutions.
“Let me start by saying that there is no fraud in NELFUND. ICPC reported that the information was not correct. What we have are issues related to the timeline,” he said.
ICPC had announced it had commenced a comprehensive investigation into alleged discrepancies surrounding the disbursement of student loans.
Culled from The Guardian
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