The Honourable Minister of Education, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, has cleared the air on the widespread reports that there is fraud in the disbursement of student loans by the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and some tertiary institutions.
According to the Minister, there is no fraud in NELFUND.
Dr. Alausa gave the clarification while briefing the press after a close-door meeting with Vice-Chancellors and NELFUND Managing Director, held at the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (Tetfund) building, on Wednesday in Abuja.
Spark News Daily reports that the Minister of State for Education, Prof Suwaiba Sa’id Ahmad and the Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof Abdullahu Yusufu Ribadu were also part of the meeting.
The meeting which was at the instance of the Minister is to discuss the various processes and modalities of fund disbursement from both NELFUND and the Nigerian universities to the the students.
Recall that reports of fraudulent activities with student loans disbursement by NELFUND and some tertiary institutions has been trending for the past weeks.
However, rising from today’s meeting, the Minister said there is no misappropriation of funds by NELFUND.
“We had a meeting today, myself the Honourable Minister of State for Education, and the Permanent Secretary, the Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission, and the MD of NELFUND, together with several of our Federal Universities Vice-Chancellors.
“There is no fraud in NELFUND, the issue we had was the processes and guidelines for disbursement of funds.
“But then there is room for improvement! That’s what we discussed – how to improve these processes to better serve Nigerians”.
He told journalists that a Committee will be set up to deliberate on the outcomes of the meeting and provide guidelines for standardizing the fund disbursement processes and charges by the universities.
