You Don’t Need Any God Father To Access Student Loan, Education Minister Tells Nigerians

The Minister of State for Education, Dr Yusuf Sununu has assured Nigerians that the student loan, when implemented will not be based on ‘who you know’.

Sununu, who was speaking on a monitored program on Arise TV on Wednesday, stated that the processes for the application of the loan will be made available online for students to access.

Sununu explained that the federal government had set up a committee to address all bottlenecks concerning the loan and work out modalities for accessing the loan that will be acceptable to all.

“When the President came into office, the National Assembly had already signed the student loan bill. It was also assented by the President immediately he came into office.

“Once there is an Act, it introduces a framework that will allow you to draw out policies that will help in the implementation of the Act. The Act cannot 100 percent address all issues. It must give a gap to where administrators must come in to develop a policy that must be derived from the Act.

“After the Act has been signed, the next thing is to ensure that the Act becomes operational by submitting to the National Assembly a budget line that will be used to fund the loan. We will develop the framework that is acceptable to Nigerians,” he said.

He assured that by January, 2024, all the bottlenecks concerning the loan would have been addressed and details will be made available to Nigerians.

“Nigerians will have all the details and they will begin to access the loan; the amount will also be decided. All these will be contained in the policy statement that the committee is working on. The committee is working tirelessly to come up with policies that will be acceptable to all Nigeria,” he said.

The minister also stated that there will be room for collaboration with the private sector, adding that a legal framework will be put in place to address such collaborations.

Recall that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the Student Loan bill into law in June, 2023. The Act allows Nigerian students in tertiary institutions to access interest-free loans from the Nigerian education loan fund.