Student Loan Bill And Matters Arising

Comments have continued to echo around the Student Loan Bill, recently signed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

In fulfillment of a promise he made during his campaign, Tinubu, on June 12, signed the students loan bill to provide easy access to higher education for students.

Under this law, indigent Nigerian students will get interest-free loans to see them through their stay in government-owned higher institutions.

Beneficiaries are expected to repay the borrowed sum once they start working, that is, two years after the mandatory national service.

Potential beneficiaries will also be expected to apply to the Chairman of the Bank through the Chief Executives of their respective institutions having secured a place in the school.

The student loan bill sponsored by the Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives, and now the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, which provides for interest-free loans to indigent Nigerian students, passed the third reading at the House, a few weeks ago.

While some stakeholders hail the signing of the bill as a game changer, others have maintained that many students won’t meet the stringent requirements as contained in the bill.

Commenting on the bill, the national president of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, said with over one million students in Nigerian public universities, the loan scheme falls short of providing adequate tuition coverage.

He said the conditions for the loan are “not practicable,” noting that more than 90% of students won’t meet the stringent requirements to access and repay the loan.

“We, as a union also did research of countries all over the world, of people who have benefited from this loan, they were committing suicide. Recently, (President Joe) Biden is trying to pay back the bank loans of some who borrowed in the US.

“It is better to look for alternative means of funding education than to encumber students whose parents earn N30,000 a month with a loan.”

Osodeke therefore, asked President Tinubu to convert the loans to grants for the poor students as they will have a heavy burden of paying back within 2 years or they will go to jail if they fail to do so.

But an ex-president of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Asefon Sunday Dayo lauded Tinubu over the bill.

He described the accented bill on Student Loan as a real succour to the difficulty occasioned by inflated school fees and fuel subsidy removal.

“Indeed, His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President Federal Republic of Nigeria is a man of his words and very conscious of his promises to the entire Nigerian populace as enshrined in his manifesto titled; Renewed Hope, he added.”

He therefore call on critical stakeholders in the education sector National Universities Commission (NUC), Ministry of Education Science and Technology and others to as a matter of urgency see to the review of standards for the qualification of beneficiaries in the utmost interest of downtroddens, this should be the first assignment of designate Minister of Education upon assumption of duty.

Also, a professor of Public Administration, Tunji Olaopa said with the student loan, there is the prospect of an increased flow of funding into the higher education system in ways that make for an equitable infusion that trumps the conventional financing through scholarship, bursaries and grants that are often crippled by fiscal deficit, bureaucratic corruption and acute politicisation of the schemes.

According to him, that the Loan Fund has now become a reform reality, and is in the process of being implemented, is a significant development.

“Indeed, I am excited that the fundamental crisis of funding higher education in Nigeria is getting attention from a government that wants to tackle the development agenda from the perspective of facilitating human capital development.

“We can only just wait and keep hoping that the Student Loan Fund will do what it is meant to do-alleviate the crisis of funding higher education in ways that will enhance the injection of critical funds into tertiary education and loosen up the dynamics that will throw up critical human capital that energise Nigeria’s development agenda.”

An educationist who did not want his name mentioned said student loans in a country with high rate of unemployment and poverty cannot work.

“My major concern is about the repayment of the loan two years after National Youth Service. Nigeria has many graduates that have not gotten jobs for more than five years. What will now become of such a student who took a student loan?”