The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) said its disbursements to students under the loan scheme reached N59.8 billion as of June 5, 2025.
The Fund disclosed this in its status report released on Saturday, where it revealed that the number of Nigerian students benefitting from the scheme stood at 298,124.
A breakdown of the disbursements shows that the sum of N30.2 billion was disbursed for institutional fees, while N29.6 billion was disbursed for the students’ upkeep.
However, reacting to the report, some of the beneficiaries complained that they have not received their upkeep allowance for April, let alone May.
Beneficiaries fume
The announcement by NELFUND has not gone down well with some of the beneficiaries, who expressed their anger under the post shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the organization.
An X user identified as @Temmy_Dayo_ _, said that while those who had issues with their accounts had not been paid since last year, those without any issue were yet to receive their April allowance.
“Pay upkeep to thousands of students that corrected their accounts details since last year. Even our April payment status is showing “disbursed” when we have not received any upkeep at all. You people are thieves. You people are not transparent at all,” he posted.
The situation was not different for @Roshmancrypto, who wrote: “I haven’t seen my April upkeep and it is showing ‘disbursed’”.
Another beneficiary, Isaiah Utitofon, also complained that he had not received April upkeep allowance, describing the data released by NELFUND as “lies”.
“You guys are so not serious and incompetent. Many of us haven’t seen our April upkeep like myself but u guys drop statistics every time. NELFUND pay our upkeep,” posted another beneficiary on X.
Meanwhile, NELFUND has yet to respond to all the complaints as of the time of filling this report.
What you should know
Nairametrics reported that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) recently commenced a comprehensive probe into alleged discrepancies surrounding the disbursement of student loans under the NELFUND amid concerns over an unaccounted sum of N71.2 billion.
The commission launched a comprehensive inquiry after reports surfaced suggesting that 51 tertiary institutions were involved in unauthorized deductions from student loans.
- The commission noted that despite the Federal Government’s release of N100 billion for the program, only N28.8 billion had been disbursed directly to students, leaving an unaccounted balance of N71.2 billion.
- In response to these allegations, NELFUND publicly denied any mismanagement or unaccounted funds within its current student loan scheme.
- The Fund clarified that the reported discrepancies referred to pre-existing education financing programs that predate NELFUND’s operational commencement in 2024.
