Is it True That 600,000 Nigerian Students Have Benefited From The 104 Billion Naira Student Loan?
The Federal Government has declared that over 600,000 students have received loans worth 104 billion Naira.
The claim which was posted on January 31, 2025, by a popular verified handle, Naija PR, has the caption: “600, 000 students have received loans worth N104 billion – FG”.
As of the time this post was published, it had generated over 2,300,000 views, 1,800 replies, 1,400 retweets and reposts, over 7,800 likes and about 200 bookmarks.
The claim made by the government has been reported by The Nation, Daily Post Nigeria and Arise News TV. Due to how viral the claim has gone, NV-A went ahead to verify it.
VERIFICATION
The student loan program was officially launched in May 2024, with an initial target of benefiting 1.2 million students in federal tertiary institutions. Since then, the program has been progressively disbursing funds to eligible students to support their education.
The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) which was setup to administer the student loan has been giving progressive reports about its activities. NELFUND’s portal, the platform where students registered and applied for these loans, showed that 365,246 loan applications have been recieved while 473,093 students have registered on its websites, as of February 4, 2025.
On February 3, 2025, NELFUND reported that it has disbursed loans to a significant number of students across the country. Specifically, NELFUND has provided institutional fee loans totaling N20,074,050,000 to 192,906 students in various tertiary institutions. Additionally, for student upkeep, NELFUND has disbursed N12,818,960,000 to 169,114 students, each receiving a monthly stipend of N20,000.
NELFUND released this statement setting the record straight on its X verified handle.
(NelFUND’s Statement)
NV-A went further to check the calculations from NELFUND. A monthly upkeep of N20,000 monthly disbursed to the tune of N12,818,960,000 plus institutional loan of N20,074,050,000 disbursed gives us N32,893,010,000, which is way lesser than N104,000,000,000 disclosed by the government.
Also, NELFUND reported that 192,906 had benefited from institutional loans, while 169,114 students had become monthly beneficiaries of the monthly N20,000 totalling 362,020 students accounted for. This is 237,980 less than 600,000 declared by the federal government.
CONCLUSION
The claim that over 600,000 students have received loans worth 104 billion Naira is MISLEADING as there are discrepancies in the sum total of disbursed amount and beneficiaries when compared to the official figures released by NELFUND as of February 3, 2025.
