The Nigerian Education Loan Fund has said it will introduce a wallet-based payment system to enable students to authorise direct payment of their approved tuition fees to their institutions, in a move to prevent double payments and eliminate disputes over refunds.
The new system is expected to take effect in the 2026/2027 academic session.
Already, the pilot phase has commenced, with more than 400,000 applications recorded ahead of the planned rollout next academic session.
The Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed this during a media briefing on the proposed NELFUND 2.0 regional workshops across the six geopolitical zones on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said the system would allow students to initiate payments through their phones, with approved funds transferred directly to their respective institutions rather than their personal bank accounts.
‘We are putting the power for payment in the hands of the students. The payment to the institution will now be walletised, so that students can click on their phone and the institution is paid directly,’ Sawyerr said.
He explained that the new arrangement was designed to address cases where students paid their fees independently because they were unaware that NELFUND had already remitted the money to their institutions.
‘For example, we paid the institution on Monday. The student did not know on Tuesday that we had paid and paid again by Wednesday to meet a deadline. Then on Friday they heard we had paid,’ he said, explaining how duplicate payments had led to refund requests.
Sawyerr said the new system would ensure that students knew when their payments were made, while institutions would receive the funds directly.
Also speaking, Executive Director of Operations of NELFUND, Mustapha Iyal, said the digital tokens would be tied to specific institutions and could neither be transferred to students’ personal accounts nor redirected to other schools.
‘The token is attached to an institution. It is not a personal wallet like a mobile money wallet. Each token is attached to a certain institution, so it only goes there,’ Iyal said.
He stressed that students would not receive cash through the system, but would authorise payments directly to their schools.
‘We are not giving students money, but we are giving them power,’ he said.
Iyal explained that the funds could only be transferred to the institution for which the loan was approved.
‘If you are going to the University of Maiduguri and you have a token that says your fees have been approved, if you push the button, N200,000 will go to that school account. That person cannot send that money to Borno State University,’ he said.
He added: ‘If they don’t push the button, the money doesn’t go anywhere. It can never be transferred to the personal account of the student or anyone else. It can only go in one direction, to one spot. It’s a one-to-one push.’
He said the system would also address complaints over delayed refunds, noting that NELFUND paid tuition directly to institutions and did not hold students’ money for subsequent refunds.
‘We are not encouraging refunds because that’s not what NELFUND is set up for,’ he said, urging students who needed financial assistance to apply early and complete the process before the stipulated deadline.
He also cautioned institutions against asking students to pay their fees with the promise of subsequent refunds.
The executive director said NELFUND was developing a portal that would enable parents to check whether their children’s school fees had been paid by entering their matriculation numbers.
‘The portal would indicate whether payment had been made without disclosing the amount, a measure he said would help prevent students from collecting money from their parents after their fees had been settled through the scheme,’ Iyal said.
Iyal said the initiative followed instances in which institutions failed to notify students promptly after receiving payments, leaving beneficiaries unaware that their fees had been settled.
Sawyerr said the proposed NELFUND 2.0 regional workshops would prepare participating institutions and stakeholders for the upgraded Student Loan Application System as the fund anticipates increased demand for loans.
He clarified that the prospect of applications rising to two million referred to expected demand rather than an increase in available funding.
‘The demand is huge, and I’m not sure we will ever have enough funds to cope with it,’ he said, adding that the fund needed to strengthen its technology, systems and processes to manage the growing number of applications.
The workshops, themed ‘NELFUND 2.0: Transforming Access, Simplifying Applications and Empowering Students,’will bring together institutional heads, bursars, desk officers, IT administrators, students and community representatives.
The sessions will focus on application procedures, institutional verification, technical readiness and improved service delivery, with the aim of reducing errors and strengthening coordination between NELFUND and participating institutions.