The Federal Government on Wednesday said it will begin giving out student loans from September 2023.
On Monday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed into law the Student Loan Bill in fulfilment of a promise he made during his campaign.
The student loan bill sponsored by the Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, provides for interest-free loans to indigent Nigerian students.
Addressing journalists at a press briefing in Abuja, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, David Adejo, said the law would provide easy access to higher education for indigent Nigerians through interest-free loans from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund.
According to him, the loan will be for students in private and public schools.
He said that president Tinubu had also approved a committee made up of ministries and agencies to see to the fruition of the loan scheme.
According to him, the bill is to make sure that every Nigerian has access to higher education through what we called the Higher Education Nigerian Bank.
He said: “Learning from past mistakes, the bank is not going to be the type that will sit down and be collecting application loans.
”It will also perform normal banking functions and make sure loans are given because we had cases of loan recovery in the past.
“The Act as it is tells us the process, but as I speak with you today, the president has approved the committee made up of the ministries and agencies and their meeting will be coming up on June 20.
“The president has also directed that by September to October this 2023/2024 academic session, he wants to see recipients of these loans. So it is a very serious march for us so between now and then we have to phantom the process for people to get the loan.”
The Permanent Secretary also said government would create a specialised bank for the operation of the loans, noting that there would be a tracking system for efficient smooth running of the loans scheme.
He said this would cover both students in Private and public schools, adding that the government would also create a new bank for it.
“We are not going to use existing banks. We are going to create a new bank that will address this because we can’t use an existing bank.
“We don’t want to make it that only people who wants to go to public schools will benefit from it, private schools are paying tuition so you have to give them the opportunity.
“The loan is for you to get an education programme and get employed, then you start paying back. The loan recovery does not start until you get employed,” he said.
While commending president Tinubu for this stride, he said: ”Our current president today is a job creator from his experience from the private sector and he has given us policy direction and job creation is one of the things he is going to do, even though you cannot create job for every body.”
Meanwhile, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has that the Student Loan Bill, signed into law by President Bola Tinubu will have an adverse effect on students.
Telling journalists in Abuja on Wednesday that the new law has the potential to send many students out of school, the ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, insisted that it might have an adverse effect on millions of prospective students who rely on tuition-free higher institutions of learning to acquire knowledge.
He said: “A country where more than 133 million are living below the poverty line and you want to introduce tuition fees? It will be counterproductive.
“Every Nigerian should know what is going to happen next and there may likely be another bill waiting for signature that will introduce tuition fees.
“If the bill indicated that the loan is to pay tuition fees and there are no tuition fees in Nigerian universities, then what is your next approach?”
Osodeke. said the bill is not new, revealing how the union rejected it when former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration brought it up.
He, however, noted that the union is yet to have access to the accurate copy of the law signed by Tinubu, adding that there was need to get and study it.
Speaking further, he said: “We have said long ago, in 2017, to President Buhari when they came up with the issue of tuition fees, that every student will pay N1 million and we said you cannot put that in our agreement and you cannot use that to negotiate with us and with the nature of the country we have today, there is no way that will work.
“What will happen is that the majority of students whose parents cannot afford it will pull out of school in anger and you know what that means, they will fight the society back. But let us get the correct information first before knowing the next steps.”