The students in Federal Government-owned tertiary institutions will be the first batch of beneficiaries of the student loan scheme as the portal opens on Friday.
Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, stated this yesterday while unfolding the conditions would-be beneficiaries will be required to meet.
No fewer than 1.2 million students are expected to benefit from the cardinal programme of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration.
President Tinubu on April 3 signed into law the bill on the scheme in line with his electoral promise that no Nigerian student would drop out of school on account of lack of funds.
The ambitious cardinal programme will be funded with one per cent of the total annual collectable revenue by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).
This year, the revenue target given to the FIRS is N19.4 trillion.
Should the agency meet this projection, N194 billion will be available as a loan to the beneficiary students.
Repayment, according to the law, will commence two years after the completion of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.
Speaking yesterday on other conditions for beneficiaries, Sawyerr said students in federal institutions such as universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and technical colleges, whose institutions have completed and uploaded their student data would get the opportunity.
He said: “We are going to start with federal institutions because it is a programme that we have to roll out in phases. It will eventually be rolled out to state-owned institutions.”
