On Wednesday, the federal government declared that it has begun putting all necessary safeguards in place to ensure that student loans begin between September and October 2023.
Speaking to reporters in Abuja, Andrew David Adejo, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, disclosed this.
He stated that a committee made up of ministries and agencies has been authorized by President Bola Tinubu to oversee the passage of the Students Loan Bill, and that the committee’s first meeting will take place on June 20.
Adejo also revealed that the government will establish a specialized bank to manage the loans, stressing that the plan would be tracked in order to work smoothly and efficiently.
Adejo said “The bill is to make sure that every Nigerian has access to higher education through what we called the Higher Education Nigerian Bank.
“Learning from past mistakes, the bank is not going to be the type that will sit down and be collecting application loans, it will also perform normal banking functions and make sure loans are given because we had cases of loan recovery in the past.
“The Act as it is tells us the process, but as I speak with you today, the president has approved the committee made up of the Ministries and agencies and their meeting will be coming up 20th of June.
“The president has also directed that by September to October of this 2023/2024 academic session, he wants to see recipients of these loans. So it is a very serious march for us so between now and then we have to phantom the process for people to get the loan.
“We are not going to use existing banks. We are going to create a new bank that will address this because we can’t use an existing bank”.
He added that the loans scheme will be run in such a way that both students attending public and private school will benefit from it.
“We don’t want to make it that only people who want to go to public schools will benefit from, private schools are paying tuition so you have to give them the opportunity”.