Obasanjo Wants Private Students Loan Be Included in FG’s Student Loan Scheme
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has advocated the extension of the federal government’s student loan scheme to students of the country’s private universities.
According to him, exclusion of a group of students from the loan scheme would be counter-productive.
Obasanjo made the call during the inauguration of the Asiwaju Onafowokan, Coleman and Wires buildings at the College of Post Graduate Bells University at the Bells University, Ota.
The former President who is the proprietor of the university said the loan scheme was crucial to the education development of the society and welfare of students.
The Vice Chancellor has spoken about the need to include students in private universities as beneficiaries of the Student Loan Scheme. I urge the government to listen to that and take heed to include them too. I doubt if the scheme will be run without corruption, that is another matter entirely, he said.
Obasanjo, the proprietor of Bell University of Technology, opined that the loan scheme was crucial to the development of the society and the welfare of the citizens and that excluding a group of people would be counter-productive.
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Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of Bell University of Technology, Prof. Jeremiah Ojediran, had pleaded for the inclusion of private universities’ students in the scheme.
That is how they excluded students in private universities from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and the recent decision to exclude them from the student’s loan scheme is unfair.
These decisions were out of touch with the current realities of the society and the expectations of the people.
Many parents struggle to keep their children enrolled in schools, whether public or private, due to the economic downturn in the country, he said.
Recall that the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, Mr Akintunde Sawyerr, had last week told media men that students in private institutions would not benefit from the loan scheme, at least for now.
His argument was that it was a programme for social re-engineering and redistribution of wealth meant to assist the poor in the society.
