The Nigerian Education Loan Fund has assured students that beneficiaries of the student loan scheme will not be restricted from travelling abroad after graduation.
Managing Director and Chief Executive of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, made this clarification during a sensitisation programme at Edo University, Iyamho, on Wednesday, while addressing students’ concerns about potential travel limitations.
“The law that sets up the Nigerian Education Loan Fund does not limit your ability to go and look for work wherever you want. You are not tied. It doesn’t say you cannot leave Nigeria because you have a loan with us. You can go wherever you want to go in the world. It is not possible for you to say that I can’t travel around the world.
“However, I think the right and proper thing to do, if you have a loan in Nigeria and you want to get a job somewhere else, is to pay the loan yourself back to your country,” Sawyerr said.
He encouraged students to take advantage of the loan scheme to ease the financial burden of education on their families, emphasising its unique benefits compared to other loan types.
According to Sawyerr, the loan repayment structure is interest-free, even if repayments stretch over a decade.
“I want you to embrace it and I want you to act upon it because, if you miss this opportunity, it’s one that will affect generations… You know why? Because NELFUND is different from all other types of loans. It is the only loan you can take to acquire something that can never be taken away from you,” he said.
While expressing the commitment of the Fund to always ensure transparency in all its dealings, Sawyerr said NELFUND will be fully ready to disburse N135bn if all the applications received so far are fully processed.
“We have received about 520,000 registrations and about 419,000 applications. We have processed and paid 261,000 students. Both upkeep and institutional fees. Our total exposure today, if we were to pay everybody that has applied, is somewhere in the region of N135 billion. But we have not processed all those people. We have got the money and we are ready in case all of them get processed. We can disburse N135 billion,” he said.