The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced plans to introduce measures to prevent students from benefiting from its loan scheme while allegedly allowing their parents to continue paying their school fees.

The Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this on Wednesday during a press briefing, explaining that the fund was working to strengthen accountability and ensure that beneficiaries use the student loan programme for its intended purpose.

Sawyerr said the fund had identified cases of students allegedly receiving financial assistance through NELFUND while still placing the burden of tuition payments on their parents.

He described the practice as unacceptable and vowed to address the situation.

“This comment is based on our recognition that there are so many students out there who are double-dipping. They are taking from the NELFUND and still stressing their parents,” he said.

“We are going to put an end to that.”

As part of the proposed measures, NELFUND plans to establish a mechanism that will allow parents to verify whether their children's school fees have been paid through the scheme, without necessarily having access to the specific amounts involved.

According to Sawyerr, the initiative is intended to address situations in which parents continue to bear tuition expenses despite their children having access to government-backed educational loans.

The move comes as the Federal Government intensifies efforts to expand access to tertiary education through its student loan programme, which seeks to ease financial barriers and enable eligible students to pursue higher education.

Under the scheme, NELFUND provides loans to cover institutional charges, while upkeep allowances are processed separately to support beneficiaries' living expenses.

To improve understanding of the programme and prevent potential misuse, the fund will organise re-education workshops across the country's six geopolitical zones.

Sawyerr explained that the exercise would go beyond conventional sensitisation campaigns by educating students, parents and tertiary institutions on the payment process and changes introduced to improve the administration of the scheme.

“We can easily do a press release and say, ‘Hey, this is what we're doing.’ But if we don't educate the institutions, if we don't educate the students, everybody will still be running behind,” he said.

“This is not sensitisation. This is re-education of the stakeholders and the students as to the changes that we have made in their favour,” he added.

He said the workshops would clarify issues surrounding institutional fee payments, upkeep allowances and the documentation required from beneficiaries.

The NELFUND managing director also indicated that journalists might be invited to some of the engagements to observe the exercise and help communicate the revised procedures to a wider audience.

He urged media organisations to support the information campaign, noting that the regional workshops might not reach every student who needs clarification.

Meanwhile, NELFUND Executive Director, Mustapha Iyal, explained that the fund's payment system was designed to minimise intermediaries in the processing of institutional fees.

Iyal said the system relies on students' application identification numbers and wallet numbers rather than their conventional bank account numbers when processing institutional payments.

“To be clear, we don't use account numbers. We use their application ID and wallet number,” he said.

He explained that tuition fees and upkeep allowances follow separate payment channels. While institutional charges are processed through the fund's payment arrangement, upkeep allowances are transferred to beneficiaries' personal bank accounts through external payment platforms.

According to him, NELFUND uses platforms such as NIBSS Instant Payments and Paystack to process upkeep payments because the fund is not a banking institution and cannot open bank accounts for beneficiaries.

He added that the involvement of external payment channels could sometimes result in delays, depending on the financial institutions handling the transactions.

Providing an update on the programme's operations, Iyal disclosed that the pilot phase covered approximately 400,000 students, with about 20,000 additional students recorded between the previous week and the week of the briefing.

He further stated that the system processed transactions for nearly 5,000 students daily.

“We are not talking about 20,000. No, we are talking about 400,000,” he said, emphasising the scale of the operation.

Iyal also explained that NELFUND uses a tokenised system linked to each student's application identification number, with a wallet attached to the application.

He said the upkeep wallet operates separately from the mechanism used for institutional payments, ensuring a distinction between fees paid directly to schools and allowances transferred to students.

The planned reforms underscore NELFUND's renewed focus on transparency, accountability and stakeholder education as the Federal Government's student loan programme expands, with parents expected to gain a means of confirming whether tuition payments have been made through the scheme.