The Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, says the student loan scheme helped reduce the tertiary education dropout rate by 20 percent in 2025.
Sawyerr disclosed this on Sunday during an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today, saying research had shown that NELFUND support enabled more students to remain in school and complete their education.
According to him, “there is clear evidence” that the scheme is helping to keep students in tertiary institutions.
“There is some other evidence from the research that has been done that shows that we reduced by 20 percent the dropout rate last year. There is clear evidence that this is working,” he said.
However, Sawyerr did not disclose the organisation behind the research or the methodology used to arrive at the 20 percent figure.
He also referenced a recent study by the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission, which he said found that 84 percent of NELFUND beneficiaries were able to continue their tertiary education because of the loan scheme.
Addressing concerns about the management of NELFUND funds, Sawyerr said the organisation operates both internal and external audit systems.
He explained that NELFUND does not disburse cash directly, adding that payments are made from its Central Bank accounts into beneficiaries’ bank accounts.
“When we pay this N20,000 to students every month, it goes directly to their bank accounts. We have their BVN. We can also see what is going on in their bank account,” he said.
On complaints over delays in refunding students who had already paid their institutional fees before receiving NELFUND support, Sawyerr attributed some of the challenges to the timing of the scheme’s introduction.
He said NELFUND was launched midway through some academic sessions, by which time certain institutions had already collected fees from students.
While some institutions promptly refunded eligible students, others failed to do so, he said, adding that NELFUND had involved security and investigative agencies in some cases to address the issue.
Established in 2024, NELFUND provides interest-free loans to eligible students in tertiary institutions.
The fund said on September 3 that it had disbursed more than ₦355 billion to 1,659,853 beneficiaries out of 1,800,489 applications received.