The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has commenced investigations into about 34 tertiary institutions over allegations that they failed to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the Federal Government’s student loan scheme.

Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Sunday, revealing that the agency launched the investigations following a surge in petitions from affected students.

According to him, NELFUND is working with anti-corruption agencies, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), internal auditors and other relevant stakeholders to uncover the circumstances surrounding the alleged failure by some institutions to refund excess tuition payments.

“I can tell you that there are about 34 institutions that we are looking at the moment to see what’s going on because of the number of petitions we’ve received,” Sawyerr said.

He explained that the issue stemmed from President Bola Tinubu’s directive to commence the student loan scheme midway into the academic session, a development that resulted in some students paying their tuition fees before later receiving loans from NELFUND.

“What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment. Some from the students, some from us.

“The refund process is entirely out of our hands. It is the recipient of the double payments that are obliged to make refunds to the students,” he stated.

Sawyerr noted that many of the affected students relied on the refunds to repay loans obtained from relatives, parents or other sources to finance their education.

“Most students in this country are hard up. They don’t have enough money for themselves.

“So, when they make payment for their education and then they take a loan for the same education, they expect their money to be refunded to them.

“Some of them have borrowed the funds, their parents have borrowed the funds, and they need to repay those funds,” he added.

While commending some institutions for promptly processing refunds, the NELFUND boss expressed concern that others had failed to do so.

“Some have been very good at this. Others haven’t been so good at it.

“I reserve judgement on the intentionality around it because for some of them, they just didn’t have the process to make refunds,” he said.

To prevent similar challenges in the future, Sawyerr disclosed that NELFUND is developing a token-based payment system that will enable students to electronically authorise tuition payments directly to their institutions.

“We’re looking at a tokenised system where the student has the funds effectively as a token on their telephone and when they go to the bursary, they can effectively push a button that makes the payment,” he explained.

He reiterated that the agency deliberately pays tuition fees directly to institutions rather than students to minimise the risk of diversion of loan funds.

“We chose in our setting up of this not to pay students directly for the loans because that would take us into an entirely new area.

“Paying the funds to the students, rather, could really lead to the temptation for them to divert and do other things,” he said.

Sawyerr, however, acknowledged that NELFUND lacks the statutory powers to compel institutions to refund affected students or prosecute erring officials.

“We don’t have the powers of arrest, we don’t have powers of prosecution. Our hands are tied in that regard,” he stated.

He revealed that many students had taken their complaints beyond NELFUND by reporting the matter to anti-corruption agencies.

“Students who are frustrated and unable to get their refunds write to us, but they also write to the EFCC and the ICPC,” he said.

According to him, one of the ongoing investigations involves a five-member team made up of NELFUND officials, internal auditors, representatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), anti-corruption personnel and NANS.

“A five-person team has gone out to a specific institution that’s been accused of this to go and do an investigation,” he disclosed.

The NELFUND boss also addressed concerns over tuition fee increases by some tertiary institutions following the introduction of the student loan scheme, stating that the agency had refused to honour payments to institutions that arbitrarily increased their fees.

“Some schools, because they get paid easily, started to put up their fees. We refused, point blank, to pay institutions who had hiked their fees beyond a certain level,” he said.

Sawyerr stressed that while investigations remain ongoing, the agency is approaching the matter cautiously.

“We tend to take the view that perhaps it’s not intentional. We institute many investigations, we generate many reports. Any small hint of anything going wrong, we set up a small committee to look at it because we’re trying to learn,” he concluded.