Africa-Press – Nigeria. The Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, has explained the reasons behind the observed disparities in the payment of students’ upkeep allowances under the new scheme.
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja, NELFUND Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, attributed the disparities to application timing, institutional processes, and the evolving nature of the initiative.
The NELFUND boss acknowledged that, while the Fund had received several complaints from students regarding delayed stipends, many of the issues arose from procedural and timing differences across institutions.
“It is not possible to have this kind of scheme without having a complaint somewhere. We receive complaints everyday here, about one thing or the other.
“When we analyse the complaints, some of them are our fault, some of them are not our fault.
“Some students will tell you that they have been waiting for their stipend, they have not gotten it.
“When you asked, how long have you been waiting, when did you apply? They will say, last year.
“When we look at the books, however, we will discover that they only applied the previous week.
“When it comes to money, people want to see how fast they can get it,” he said.
He further explained that students’ varying academic calendars and application timelines had made synchronisation of upkeep payments complex.
Sawyerr, however, said that the Fund would not make retrospective payments to avoid cases of double disbursement.
According to him, to avoid double payments, once students apply for a new session and they begin the processing, they will stop payments for the previous session, irrespective of how many months’ stipend they have received.
He admitted that many students misunderstood the process because it had not been clearly explained, before now.
“The truth about it is that we are dealing with many different date points in this business,” he said.
According to him, when students apply for the loan, it takes some time to process, because they have to carry out due diligence.
He, however, disclosed that the Federal Ministry of Education would soon take a firmer stance to ensure institutions refund such excess payments timeously, rather than carrying them over into a new academic year.
Addressing reports of schools inflating tuition fees, the NELFUND head clarified that institutions themselves input the official fee structures into the student verification system.
He assured continuous improvement in the system to nip hitches and discrepancies in the bud and enhanced transparency of the process.
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