The leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) is meeting officials of the federal government on Monday to put the finishing touches to the launch of the Student Loan Scheme.

Disclosing this in a chat, the National President of NANS, Comrade Lucky Emonefe, said the meeting would allow the student body to know the preparations so far made for the take-off of the scheme.

“We are scheduled for a meeting with the committee in charge of the scheme on Monday in Abuja. We gathered that an executive secretary has been appointed for the scheme and that a website was created for it.

”Since the government says it is ready for the scheme to start this month, we are looking forward to that too. However, we would want some flexibility in the conditions listed for people to benefit from the scheme. This is necessary to allow more students to benefit,” he said on the phone,” he said..

Emonefe also expressed the hope that the meeting would allow all grey areas to be resolved during the meeting before the eventual start of the scheme.

The major areas some stakeholders want amendments to be made regarding the scheme are the eligibility for the scheme, those to serve as guarantors for beneficiaries and the repayment period.

Apart from being a student of a higher institution in the country, other main conditions to benefit from the scheme are that: The applicant’s income or family income should not exceed N500,000 per annum;

The applicant must provide a minimum of two civil servants as guarantors. These guarantors should either be at least at level 12 in the civil service or meet the following criteria: a lawyer with at least 10 years of post-call experience, a judicial officer, or a Justice of Peace; among others.

Monitoring and repayment

Repayment of the loan will commence two years after the completion of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, and the repayment amount will be deducted directly from the beneficiary’s salary at a rate of 10% by the employer, while self-employed beneficiaries will remit 10% of their total monthly profit to the designated Students Loan account prescribed by the Bank.

Furthermore, Section 6 (f) of the Act incorporates a system for continuous monitoring of academic records of the grantees of the loans. It, however, does not provide any approach towards reviewing the courses and curriculum of the students to reflect economic realities to achieve the successful repayment of the loans.

Lecturers’ expectations

The National President of the Congress of University Academics, CONUA, Dr Niyi Sunmonu, said the body expects the FG to have done the needful for a successful launch and implementation of the scheme.

“Our expectation is that the Federal Government should have put necessary measures in place for the scheme to have taken off, even before now, if it is meant to cushion the effect of hardship on students and grant many more access to tertiary education.

“To us, there seems to be a lot of gap in between policy statements and having them effected. The bureaucracy around policies, especially the ones aimed at making life easier for the ordinary citizens should be so streamlined for prompt realizations. One doubts whether the scheme would take of this month,” Sunmonu added.

Parents’ view

The President of the National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria NAPTAN, Alhaji Haruna Danjuma, said parents were not taken along by the FG in the design, plan and even execution of the scheme.

“We were not invited for any meeting regarding the planning of the scheme. Not even being asked for any suggestion and parents are critical stakeholders in the education sector. It is like the government feel they only have to relate with students and that is all.

” We have some reservations about some provisions of the law setting up the scheme. For instance, the issue of repayment of the loan, where are the jobs for the beneficiaries to engage in after leaving school? We have other observations, but they have not given us the chance to make any input. Can it really take off this month? Let us wait and see,” he said. (Vanguard)

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