Tapre Timine
The Federal Government has announced that it is taking all necessary steps to ensure that students can begin to receive loans between September and October 2023.
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Andrew David Adejo, confirmed the development at a press conference in Abuja.
Adejo confirmed that President Bola Tinubu has already approved a committee made up of ministries and agencies to oversee the implementation of the recently signed Student Loan Bill.
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The Student Loan Bill, which was sponsored by the Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, will provide interest-free loans to indigent Nigerian students.
This law was designed to make higher education more accessible to indigent Nigerians through interest-free loans from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund.
Adejo said:
“The bill is to make sure that every Nigerian has access to higher education through what we called the Higher Education Nigerian Bank.
“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 20th of June.
“The president has also directed that by September to October of 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 further said the government will create a specialised bank for the operation of the loans to ensure an efficient running of the loans scheme with a tracking system.
According to him, the bill included both students in private and public schools.
He stressed that the government will create a new bank for it.
The PS said:
“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 want to go to public schools will benefit from, 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.”
Further describing Tinubu as a job creator, the PS 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 a job for everybody.
“What you have seen is the bill. The president has assented to the bill, let us wait to see the Act and you get the Act when it is transmitted to the Ministry of Justice to produce a gazette.”
