The Federal Government has been advised to link the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) with income records held by the Nigeria Revenue Service to strengthen the recovery of student loans.
The recommendation was contained in a policy brief released on Monday by The iRead To Live Initiative, a Nigerian higher education policy think tank.
The organisation raised concerns over the sustainability of the student loan scheme, noting that NELFUND had disbursed N355.87 billion to about 850,000 beneficiaries since its portal was launched in May 2024.
In the report titled, “Can NELFUND Sustain Itself? Financing Nigeria’s Student Loan Scheme,” the think tank warned that recovering the funds could prove difficult under the existing repayment system.
It said the government had about 18 months to strengthen its loan recovery infrastructure before beneficiaries who complete the mandatory two-year post-National Youth Service Corps grace period become liable for repayment enforcement.
The initiative recommended integrating NELFUND’s systems with income data from the Nigeria Revenue Service to enable authorities to identify borrowers’ earnings and recover outstanding loans.
According to the think tank, such integration would be particularly important for self-employed graduates and other borrowers who do not work within formal payroll structures.
It argued that depending largely on deductions through employers would not provide an effective recovery mechanism in Nigeria, where a significant proportion of workers operate within the informal economy.
The organisation said a more comprehensive income-tracking and repayment framework would be necessary to protect the sustainability of the student loan programme as more beneficiaries enter the repayment phase.
