The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele has said that some parents may be in the dark about their own children receiving funding from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).
Oyedele made the statement while addressing journalist at a media briefing in Abuja on Wednesday. The journalist had said his three children, all currently in school, hadn’t received any NELFUND support and didn’t know of any classmates who had either.
Oyedele’s response was blunt: go home and ask them properly. He suggested it was entirely possible the children had already applied and were quietly receiving the funds, and encouraged the man to ask for proof one way or another.
“You need to ask your children to be honest with you,” he said, adding that if they hadn’t yet applied, he was ready to help them do so.
The minister described NELFUND as one of the rare government interventions that has near-universal buy-in, and pointed to viral clips of jubilant students celebrating their disbursements online.
He explained that the scheme isn’t limited to tuition fees, beneficiaries also get a monthly stipend that comes interest-free, which matters a lot given how high inflation currently is.
According to Oyedele, students can access up to N1.5 million through the programme. He urged any parent unsure about the process to simply sit with their child, gather their details, and apply on their behalf if needed, either online or in person at the Ministry of Finance, where staff would walk them through it.
He circled back to the journalist’s situation, repeating that the real question was whether his children had actually applied and could show evidence of it, or whether they simply hadn’t tried at all.
Interestingly, Oyedele noted that uptake of the scheme has been stronger in northern Nigeria than in the South, attributing the gap partly to Southerners’ tendency to be more skeptical of government programmes. He said data from the scheme shows beneficiaries getting confirmation alerts soon after applying, something he said he’s witnessed firsthand.
He drew on his own experience running a personal foundation to support indigent students, recalling that some beneficiaries kept coming back to him for help even after he’d already pointed them toward NELFUND and shared the application link. Within two weeks, he said, they were coming back to confirm they’d received their alerts.
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