Relief With Conditions: The Good, Bad, and Ugly nature of NELFUND
Kehinde Ayodele When Mariam, a Part 2 student of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, refreshed her bank app (perhaps her eyes were deceiving her) that Tuesday morning, her heart raced. For weeks, she had survived on borrowed transport fares and one meal a day. Fortunately, it appeared; a whooping sum of #20,000 has been credited to her, from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), widely known as the student loan scheme. For the first time in months, Mariam, an average Nigeria student, struggling and doing everything she could to do as self support, in a bid to be educated, could finally breathe. Across the Nigeria Federal, State, and Private owned tertiary institutions, thousands of students could relate to Mariam’s story, as many of them have constantly had similar experiences since the introduction of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) was...