A member of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions has called for an urgent amendment to the Nigerian Education Loan Fund Act to extend the repayment period for beneficiaries from two to five years, arguing that the current arrangement was unrealistic in an environment where graduates faced prolonged unemployment after completing the national youth service program.
Senator Osita Izunaso, speaking at a NELFUND stakeholders’ forum in Abuja, said the scheme was one of the most practical achievements of the current administration but that its long-term sustainability depended on making key provisions more responsive to economic realities. He said asking recent NYSC graduates to begin loan repayments within two years in a labour market characterized by widespread unemployment and underemployment was not practical and would generate high default rates that threatened the fund’s viability.
He also called for an increase in the monthly stipend paid to beneficiaries above the current N20,000, describing the amount as insufficient to sustain students through their academic programs, and raised the question of accommodation costs, noting that the fund currently covered tuition and monthly upkeep but did not address housing expenses, which represented a significant burden for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Izunaso said state governments whose tertiary institutions benefited from the scheme should be compelled to make financial contributions, noting that the arrangement in which states benefited without contributing created a structural imbalance that would undermine the fund’s long-term finances. He said approximately 1.6 million students were already benefiting from the scheme and that its success needed to be measured not only by enrolment in tertiary education but by the employment outcomes of its graduates after completion, calling for inter-agency collaboration between NELFUND, employment generation agencies, and the relevant Senate committees to build that employment pathway into the program’s design.
