The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has raised alarm over a massive hike in tuition fees by some tertiary institutions, revealing that 10 schools increased their charges by as much as 900 per cent in the current academic session.
According to the Fund, tuition fees in the affected institutions jumped from about ₦200,000 to nearly ₦2 million, a development it described as unjustifiable and potentially harmful to the student loan scheme.
Mustapha Iyal, Executive Director of Operations at NELFUND, disclosed this during a media engagement in Abuja on Thursday. He explained that the Fund’s automated system detected and flagged suspicious applications linked to these fee hikes, which were consequently rejected.
Iyal said the agency was still engaging the institutions to understand the reasons for the drastic increases, adding that none of the schools had yet been named publicly.
“We have a structure for confirming institutional fees. Just yesterday, we blocked some applications because the fees had skyrocketed. For example, we saw institutions that charged about ₦200,000 last year but are now asking for ₦2 million. Our system checks these details, and we also get feedback from students when they confirm their loans,” Iyal said.
“At the moment, we have about 10 institutions whose payments were suspended due to the outrageous hikes. Some have increased fees by over ₦1 million, and we are reaching out to them to find out why. This is a loan scheme; students will have to repay, and such astronomical fees could cripple them in the future.”
Iyal warned that such increases could undermine the success of the student loan initiative and impose unsustainable financial burdens on students and their families.
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