In order to guarantee that student loans start between September and October 2023, the federal government announced on Wednesday that it has started putting all required preparations in place.
President Bola Tinubu has already approved a committee made up of ministries and agencies to see to the realization of the Students Loan Bill he recently assented to, according to Andrew David Adejo, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, who made the statement while speaking to newsmen in Abuja.
Remember that Tinubu fulfilled a campaign promise he made when he signed the Student Loan Bill into law last week.
The Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, proposed a bill named the Students Loan Bill that would grant loans to needy Nigerian students without charging interest.
The Permanent Secretary stated that the law aims to give needy Nigerians simple access to higher education through interest-free loans from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund.
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,” he added.
The Permanent Secretary further said the government will create a specialised bank for the operation of the loans, noting that there will be a tracking system for the efficient running of the loans scheme.
