BREAKING: NELFUND postpones launch of students loan portal for state varsities

LASU

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has postponed the launch of students loans portal initially billed for Tuesday, June 25 by two weeks.

This followed the inability of state tertiary institutions to submit data of students to the agency.

NELFUND revealed that 117 out of 151 state tertiary institutions expected to submit data of the students to the agency, failed to do so.

This represents 77.5percent of the total number of state tertiary institutions.

NELFUND spokesman Nasir Ayitogo in a statement said only 34 state institutions have submitted completed data of the students.

“To date, only a limited number of state owned institutions have successfully completed the data submission process. These include 20 state universities out of 48, 12 state colleges out of 54 and 2 state polytechnics out of 49,” Aitogo said.

He said the application window, initially set to open on June 25, 2024, will now commence on July 10, 2024.

Last week, The Guardian reported that the absence of digital records of students in most schools as well as the lethargic response from most tertiary institutions were slowing down the implementation of the Federal Government’s students loan scheme.