NELFUND, EFCC probe 34 institutions over ‘unpaid student refunds’

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has commenced an investigation into 34 tertiary institutions over allegations of failure to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the federal government’s student loan scheme.

Akintunde Sawyerr, managing director of NELFUND, disclosed this during an interview on Arise Television on Sunday.

He said the agency has deployed a five-member investigative team, including operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and internal auditors, to the affected institutions.

According to Sawyerr, the probe was triggered by a surge in complaints from students.

“As of right now, there are 34 institutions that we are looking at closely with respect to this issue,” he said.

He explained that the issue of double payments arose following President Bola Tinubu’s directive for the student loan scheme to begin mid-session, rather than at the start of a new academic calendar. This led some students to pay their tuition fees while awaiting loan approval.

“What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment. Some from the students, some from us,” Sawyerr said.

“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.”

Sawyerr noted that many affected students had borrowed funds to meet tuition deadlines, with the expectation of being refunded once the loan payments were made.

While acknowledging that some institutions had acted promptly in issuing refunds, he said others had been less responsive, though he stopped short of attributing deliberate intent.

“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.”

He added that NELFUND is considering a tokenised payment system that would enable students to authorise direct tuition payments to institutions, thereby reducing the risk of duplicate payments.

“We chose in our setting up of this not to pay students directly for the loans because that would take us into an entirely new area,” he said.

“Paying the funds to the students, rather, quite significantly, could really lead to the temptation for them to divert and do other things.”

Sawyerr, however, admitted that the agency currently lacks the legal authority to compel institutions to issue refunds or prosecute erring officials.

He revealed that many complaints were submitted directly by students and, in some cases, copied to anti-corruption agencies.

“Students who are frustrated and unable to get their refunds write to us, but they also write to the EFCC, to the ICPC,” he said.

The NELFUND boss also raised concerns over rising tuition fees, noting that the agency had refused to disburse funds to institutions that increased fees beyond acceptable thresholds after the scheme was introduced.

“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.

Sawyerr assured that the agency would continue to investigate reported irregularities while improving the implementation of the scheme.

“We tend to take the view that perhaps it’s not intentional,” he said.

“We institute many investigations, we generate many reports. Any small hint of anything going wrong, we set up a small committee to look at it because we’re trying to learn.”