Nigeria’s National Assembly recently passed the Students’ Loan Bill sponsored by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila.
The bill aims to enable Nigerian students in higher institutions to have access to financial assistance.
The bill also seeks the establishment of the Nigerian Education Bank which shall have powers to supervise, coordinate, administer and monitor the management of student loans in Nigeria.
Loan eligibility
One of the requirements for loan eligibility is that applicant’s income or family income must be less than N500,000 per annum. What this means is that anyone or family whose monthly income is N42,000 per month is ineligible.
That requirement suggest that any family who earns N42,000 monthly in Nigeria’s current economy is rich enough to be exempt from financial facility.
Another requirement is that applicant must provide at least two guarantors: each of the guarantors must be a civil servant of not less than level 12; or a lawyer with at least ten years post-call experience; a judicial officer or a Justice of Peace.
Criticisms of the bill
The intention of the bill might seem good on the surface, but one cannot fail to question how the government intends to finance this project considering all the happenings in the country’s education sector.
The sponsor of the bill argues that the purpose is to ease the hardship of unemployed and low-income earners who cannot afford quality higher education for their wards.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had earlier in the year criticised the bill, saying it was unnecessary.
President of the union, Emmanuel Osodeke, argued that in a country where getting a good job after graduation is an impossibility, if one does not have the right ‘connections’, paying back a student loan will be next to impossible.
The government has always claimed that the country does not have enough funding to cater to the needs of education, and this is reflected in the continuous loggerheads between ASUU and the federal government.
The same reason is why Nigeria’s annual budget for education has always been less than ten percent of its total yearly budget.
This clearly shows the lack of political will in investing properly in the education sector, hence no one will be blamed for not believing in the student loan proposal.
Calls to action
The federal and state governments need to do more to improve the Nigerian education sector, and this should begin with the allocation of a tangible percentage of annual national state budgets to the sector, as recommended by UNESCO.
The government also needs to convince Nigerian students that it is committed to their welfare by finally putting to rest the demands of ASUU.
Setting up a bank for students loan will be seen as a misplaced priority if the issues grounding the education sector in Nigeria have yet to be resolved.
Photo source: Femi Gbajabiamila
