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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
President Bola Tinubu has signed the Student Loan Bill into law.
An aide to the president, Dele Alake, disclosed this to State House Correspondents on Monday evening.
The law will enable indigent Nigerian students to access loans at interest-free rates.
The ‘Students Loan (Access to Higher Education) Bill 2019, otherwise known as Bill for an Act to provide for easy access to higher education for Nigerians through interest-free loans from the Nigerian Education Fund established was sponsored by the immediate past Speaker of the House of Represenstaives, Rt Hon Femi Gbajabiamila, in 2019.
The Act provides that “notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in other enactments, all students seeking higher education in any public institution of higher learning in Nigeria shall have an equal right to access the loan without any discrimination arising from gender, religion, tribe, position or disability of any kind.”
The students would be granted loan only for the payment of tuition fees.
“The grant of the loan to any student under this Act shall be subject to the students/applicant(s) satisfying the requirements and conditions set out under this Act,” it said.
Alake, who was accompanied by other members of the media team, including Tunde Rahman and Abdulaziz Abdulaziz and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, David Adejoh, the new law is a fulfilment of one of the electoral promises of President Tinubu.
Asked if the new law will not encourage inflation of school fees, Alake said the two situations are unrelated, adding that the idea behind the law is to help indigent students obtain education in the country.
“We are very happy to announce to you that today, just a few minutes ago, the President His Excellency, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, signed into law, the Student Loans Bill and that Student Loans Bill, you all know what it entails, what it connotes.
“This is the promise made during the presidential campaign by the then candidate, His Excellency, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that he will bring back the student loans issue to the front burner and today, that promise he made has been kept, he has just signed that bill into law, which henceforth, will allow or enable our indigent students to access federal government loans to fund their educational pursuit or career and this is how it’s done in other developed climes all over the world,” he said.
Details later……