‘Completely Ridiculous’: NELFUND denies funding Tinubu supporters

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has dismissed allegations that its student loan scheme is designed to favour supporters of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, described the allegation as “completely ridiculous”, insisting that the loan application system has no mechanism for identifying applicants’ political affiliations.

Sawyerr spoke on Sunday during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme.

According to him, students seeking the loans are required to submit basic details, including their names and matriculation numbers, through an electronic application system.

“I have not heard this allegation, but I can tell you that it’s a completely ridiculous idea that the administration of Bola Tinubu is focused on trying to fund people who support the party. We are talking about students; many of them are yet to vote, some of them are going to be voting for the first time, [and] many of them are not party members.

“How, in any event, do we determine who is a party member and who isn’t? Even if you are running a manual process, how do you do that? You can’t. It’s unlikely to yield you any result.

“It is a process you have to apply for this loan electronically. If you don’t have a name, you can’t apply for this loan. You provide your matriculation number; you have to be in a public institution,” he said.

The NELFUND chief also said demand for the loans had been “overwhelming”, while maintaining that the scheme operates on clearly defined eligibility criteria rather than political, religious or ethnic considerations.

“We have a system that is focused on people who are Nigerians and meet the standard. The system doesn’t recognise your gender. There is no bias in the system at the front end or the back end.

“This is a system that doesn’t care whether you are of one tribe or the other. This system does not have a view or an opinion on whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, or an African traditional religionist; it doesn’t want to know.”

Dear Vows