NELFUND Disburses N372bn in Student Loans, APC Campaign Council Says

The Federal Government has disbursed N372.62 billion in student loans and provided technical and vocational training to more than 156,000 Nigerians, according to the APC Presidential Campaign Council.

The council listed the figures among the achievements of President Bola Tinubu’s administration in the education sector.

In a statement issued on November 4 and signed by its spokesperson, Dele Alake, the council said its assessment was based on the Federal Ministry of Education’s Nigerian Education Sector Renewal Initiative 2026 report.

It said the government allocated N3.52 trillion to education in the 2026 budget and secured 552 million dollars for the HOPE-EDU programme, which targets 29 million children, more than 500,000 teachers and 65,000 public schools.

The council also said the Better Education Service Delivery for All programme had returned more than one million out-of-school children to learning, trained 1,400 Tsangaya teachers and established 200 bilingual centres across 17 northern states.

It added that the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment programme had reached 7.19 million girls, with 3.7 million enrolled in secondary schools.

On teacher development, the statement said 53,553 teachers had registered under the EduRevamp initiative, while 51,794 joined the first cohort of the Accelerated Teacher Professionalisation Pathway.

The six-month programme is designed to provide professional qualifications, certification and licensing, with a target of 250,000 teachers by 2027.

The council said the TVET programme had received more than 2.8 million applications, with 156,446 verified trainees benefiting from free training, monthly stipends and start-up support.

It added that more than N65.7 billion had been disbursed to trainees, while N30.2 billion went to training centres.

On tertiary education, the council said NELFUND had processed 1,659,853 student loan applications and disbursed N372.62 billion across 319 institutions.

The amount includes N192.89 billion for tuition and N179.73 billion for students’ upkeep.

It also highlighted a reported 40 per cent increase in academic staff remuneration following the implementation of an agreement with the Academic Staff Union of Universities.

The Tertiary Institutions Staff Support Fund was also said to have disbursed N28 billion to 15,000 workers across 153 public institutions.

The council further listed the rehabilitation of 18 federal medical schools at a cost of N110 billion and an increase in nursing enrolment from 81,480 in 2023 to 114,300 in 2025 among the administration’s interventions.

Other initiatives include a N2.5 billion Student Venture Capital Grant for 45 student entrepreneurs and annual research funding of N365 million through the National Laureate Prize.

Reacting to the figures, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, said the success of the reforms should be measured by their impact on students, teachers and educational institutions rather than the amount of money spent or the number of programmes introduced.

“Our measure of success is not merely the amount of money allocated to education or the number of programmes introduced. It is the difference these interventions make in the lives of our children, students, teachers and institutions,” he said.

The statement did not provide an independent assessment of the reported achievements or explain how the figures compare with the sector’s performance before the Tinubu administration.