Dr. Tunji Alausa, the Minister of Education, has stated that there is no evidence of fraud in the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). He made this clarification on Wednesday after a meeting with Vice Chancellors, officials from the National Universities Commission (NUC), the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, and the Federal Ministry of Education.
Alausa dismissed the claims made by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), labeling them as inaccurate.
“Let me start by saying that there is no fraud in NELFUND. ICPC reported that the information was not correct. There is no fraud in NELFUND; what we have are issues that have to do with the timeline.” he said.
The ICPC had recently launched a thorough investigation into alleged irregularities in the disbursement of student loans. According to their preliminary findings, although the Federal Government allocated N100 billion to the loan scheme, only N28.8 billion had been distributed to students, leaving a balance of N71.2 billion unaccounted for.
Reacting to these concerns, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) threatened to stage protests over the suspected mismanagement of funds.
Additionally, the National Orientation Agency accused some universities, in collaboration with certain banks, of deliberately delaying student loan payments to profit from the process. This allegation followed reports that some institutions had made unauthorized deductions from the disbursed loan funds, with amounts ranging from N3,500 to N30,000.
In response to these allegations, the ICPC, through a statement released by its spokesperson Demola Bakare last Thursday, announced that its Special Task Force had begun a full-scale investigation into the matter.