The Nigerian Education Loan Fund has launched a joint investigation with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission into 34 tertiary institutions accused of failing to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the Federal Government’s student loan scheme.
The Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during an interview on Arise Television on Sunday, saying the agency had deployed a five-member investigative team comprising EFCC operatives and internal auditors to examine allegations against the institutions.
According to him, the investigation followed a wave of complaints from students who claimed they had yet to receive refunds after both they and NELFUND paid their tuition fees.
“As of right now, there are 34 institutions that we are looking at closely with respect to this issue,” Sawyerr said.
He explained that the double-payment problem arose because President Bola Tinubu directed that the student loan scheme should commence midway into an academic session instead of waiting for a new session.
The decision, he said, compelled many students to pay their school fees from personal funds or borrowed money to avoid missing registration deadlines while awaiting approval of their loans.
“What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment — some from the students, some from us,” he said.
Sawyerr stressed that institutions receiving the duplicate payments were responsible for refunding affected students, noting that NELFUND had no direct control over the process.
“The refund process is entirely out of our hands. It is the recipient of the double payments that is obliged to make refunds to the students,” he added.
The NELFUND boss said while several institutions had promptly returned the excess payments, others had failed to do so, although he stopped short of accusing them of deliberate misconduct.
“Some have been very good at this. Others haven’t been so good at it,” he said.
“I reserve judgement on the intentionality around it because, for some of them, they just didn’t have the process to make refunds.”
Sawyerr acknowledged that NELFUND lacked the statutory powers to compel institutions to refund students or prosecute officials responsible for delays.
However, he noted that many frustrated students had escalated their complaints beyond the agency by petitioning anti-graft agencies, including the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission.
“Students who are frustrated and unable to get their refunds write to us, but they also write to the EFCC and the ICPC,” he said.
He disclosed that NELFUND was considering the introduction of a tokenised payment system that would allow students to authorise tuition payments directly to their institutions, thereby eliminating the risk of duplicate payments.
According to him, the agency deliberately avoided paying loan funds directly to students to prevent possible diversion of the money for non-academic purposes.
Sawyerr also expressed concern over alleged arbitrary increases in tuition fees by some tertiary institutions after the introduction of the student loan scheme.
He revealed that NELFUND had declined to process payments for institutions that raised their fees beyond acceptable limits.
“Some schools, because they get paid easily, started to put up their fees. We refused, point blank, to pay institutions who had hiked their fees beyond a certain level,” he said.
He assured beneficiaries that the agency would continue to investigate every reported irregularity and strengthen the implementation framework of the student loan programme to safeguard public funds and protect students’ interests.
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