UNICAL refunds NELFUND charges as NELFUND investigates schools over unpaid loan refunds

University of Calabar (UNICAL) has disbursed Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) refunds to 1,089 students across nine batches, while processing continues for additional applicants through its newly introduced automated portal. UNICAL’s NELFUND Desk Officer, Dr. Elizabeth Effiwatt, disclosed this on Friday in Calabar. She emphasised the institution’s commitment to transparency and accountability in handling the refunds. “We have completed nine batches of manual refunds to 1,089 students. It is wrong for anyone to say UNICAL has not refunded. We are refunding, and the process is ongoing,” Effiwatt stated. She provided a breakdown of the batches:  Batch 1: 198 students  Batch 2: 104 students  Batch 3: 106 students  Batch 4: 105 students (+ 168 for glitch balance)  Batch 5: 26 students  Batch 6: 141 students  Batch 7: 99 students  Batch 8: 62 students  Batch 9: 80 studentsDr. Effiwatt commended President Bola Tinubu and NELFUND Managing Director Akintunde Sawyerr for the student support initiative. The Director of ICT at UNICAL, Dr. Eyo Essien, explained that the refunds apply to students who paid tuition fees before NELFUND disbursements. The university has launched a new digital platform that allows students to apply for refunds electronically, replacing the previous manual process. According to Essien, 2,090 students applied for refunds via the new portal in less than a month. Processing for the next phase was temporarily paused to reconcile records, but payments are expected to resume soon. He highlighted that students can now handle applications from their phones without visiting any office or paying middlemen, and they can view their balances on a dashboard. UNICAL is among the first institutions in Nigeria to implement such a seamless system.  

NANS President Comrade Akinteye Babatunde Afeez has listed institutions allegedly yet to refund students after receiving NELFUND tuition payments.

NANS releases a list of 39 Nigerian institutions that have received NELFUND tuition payments but are yet to refund students who paid their fees. Find out i Read More: https://punchng.com/full-list-nans-names-39-institutions-yet-to-refund-students-after-nelfund-payments/

 The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) says about 34 tertiary institutions are under investigation for allegedly failing to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the federal government’s student loan scheme. Speaking during an interview on Arise Television on Sunday, Akintunde Sawyerr, managing director of NELFUND, said the agency has dispatched a five-man team, including operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and internal auditors, to the affected institutions. Sawyerr said the probe followed a surge in complaints received from affected students. “As of right now, there are 34 institutions that we are looking at closely with respect to this issue,” Sawyerr said.  The NELFUND boss said the refund issue followed President Bola Tinubu’s directive that the student loan scheme commence in the middle of an academic session rather than at the start of a new one, a situation that led some students to pay their tuition while awaiting loan approval. “What happened is that a lot of schools got double payment. Some from the students, some from us,” Sawyerr said. “The refund process is entirely out of our hands. It is the recipient of the double payments that is obliged to make refunds to the students.”  The NELFUND boss said many students had relied on getting refunds after borrowing money to pay their tuition fees in order to beat registration deadlines. According to him, while some institutions had promptly refunded affected students, others failed to do so, although he stopped short of accusing them of deliberate wrongdoing. “Some have been very good at this. Others haven’t been so good at it,” Sawyerr said. “I reserve judgement on the intentionality around it because, for some of them, they just didn’t have the process to make refunds.”  Sawyerr said NELFUND is exploring a tokenised payment system that would allow students to authorise tuition payments directly to their institutions, reducing the likelihood of duplicate payments. “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,” he said. “Paying the funds to the students, rather, quite significantly, could really lead to the temptation for them to divert and do other things.” Sawyerr, however, acknowledged that the agency lacks the legal authority to compel institutions to refund students or prosecute erring officials.  Sawyerr said many of the complaints were submitted directly by affected students and, in some cases, copied to anti-corruption agencies. “Students who are frustrated and unable to get their refunds write to us, but they also write to the EFCC, to the ICPC,” he said.  The NELFUND boss also expressed concern over tuition fee hikes, noting that the agency had refused to pay institutions that raised their fees beyond acceptable levels after the loan scheme was introduced. “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.  He said the agency would continue to investigate every reported irregularity while improving the implementation of the scheme. “We tend to take the view that perhaps it’s not intentional,” he said.   “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.”

NELFUND is investigating 34 tertiary institutions for allegedly failing to refund students whose tuition fees were paid twice under the student loan scheme Read More: https://punchng.com/nelfund-probes-34-schools-over-unpaid-student-refunds/

By Joseph Erunke Abuja-The Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, has condemned what it described as unethical practices by some tertiary institutions accused of withholding tuition refunds from students and arbitrarily increasing school charges, despite benefiting from the federal government’s scheme. The Fund, in a public notice issued by the Director, Strategic Communications, Oseyemi Oluwatuyi, yesterday, said […] The post NELFUND set to crack down on varsities’ unethical practices appeared first on Vanguard News.