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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) have moved to strengthen safeguards against diversion and manipulation of funds meant to provide loans to Nigerian students.
The two institutions signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Abuja on Wednesday to deepen collaboration on financial crime prevention, risk assessment, and accountability in the management and disbursement of student loans and proceeds of crime allocated for educational support.
EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede, who spoke at the signing ceremony, charged NELFUND to ensure that approved funds get directly to indigent students, warning that preventive controls were necessary to stop financial crimes before funds were lost.
Olukoyede said the EFCC would not wait until money was stolen before intervening, stressing that the new partnership would enable both institutions to identify vulnerabilities in NELFUND’s processes and strengthen internal controls.
“There are certain things you might not have addressed your mind to, because that is what we do. We could give all your attention to it. We don’t have to necessarily wait for money to be stolen before we go into action. Why can’t we provide more prevention?” he said.
Under the agreement, EFCC and NELFUND will establish a joint Fraud Assessment and Control Unit to monitor compliance with established guidelines and identify potential risks in the administration of the scheme.
Olukoyede said the EFCC’s interest in the student-loan scheme was also driven by the need to address vulnerabilities among young Nigerians, noting that a substantial proportion of persons investigated for cybercrime were young people, including students.
“Whatever we recover from these proceeds of crime, why can’t we use it to also support them?” he asked, explaining that recovered proceeds could be channelled into interventions capable of reducing some of the vulnerabilities that expose young people to economic crimes.
The EFCC chairman further advised NELFUND to strengthen direct payment mechanisms, with educational institutions playing a role in verifying genuine beneficiaries.
“Let it go directly to the human beings,” Olukoyede said, urging NELFUND to access only funds legitimately due to it and ensure that they were promptly applied for their intended purpose.
He described NELFUND as one of the major legacy projects of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration and commended the fund’s management for expanding access to education financing.
The NELFUND Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Akintunde Sawyer, disclosed that the agency had processed 1.6 million applications, with 960,000 loans approved, as part of efforts to expand access to education financing.
Sawyer said NELFUND had upgraded its systems and launched a new portal through which applications, approvals and disbursements were handled electronically.
According to him, payments are made directly into students’ bank accounts through formal banking channels, with identifiers including the National Identification Number (NIN), Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registration details, matriculation numbers and Bank Verification Number (BVN) used for verification.
He said the system was designed to eliminate middlemen and prevent applicants from needing personal connections to access the scheme.
“We wanted to make sure that there are no gateways, no middlemen in between,” Sawyer said, adding that applicants should not need to “know anybody” within NELFUND before accessing the loan.
The NELFUND boss said the agency was also committed to ensuring that every transaction had an electronic trail that could be subjected to scrutiny by auditors and future administrators.
“We’ve been taken to task many times on various allegations, suspicions, uncertainty. Say, look, all the records are there. It’s all electronic. If there’s anything wrong, you’ll find it,” he said.
Sawyer said the agency’s systems were being designed to survive changes in leadership, stressing that effective checks and balances should not depend on individual officials.
“It’s not personal. We need to ensure that this country can run and run and run without it being all because it’s this person or that person,” he said.
He commended the EFCC for recovering funds that have supported NELFUND’s mandate, saying the new collaboration would help ensure that recovered proceeds remained protected after recovery and ultimately reached the intended beneficiaries.
The partnership, he said, would strengthen preventive controls, transparency, and accountability in the administration of funds dedicated to supporting Nigerian students.
