Student loan: Unpacking NELFUND’s 2025 strategy

Guardian Nigeria

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00:00Looking at what Nigeria is doing in terms of trying to get skill acquisition and also

00:11improve the quality of education in the country, we'll be speaking with Akintu Ndesoya who

00:18is the CEO of the Nigeria Education Loan Fund, the Managing Director Akintu Ndesoya.

00:24Basically the fund has allocated about 58.4 billion Naira to the Nigeria Education Loan

00:28Fund for the 2025 fiscal year. That's according to the Fund's Managing Director Akintu Ndesoya.

00:34Meanwhile, $116.2 billion Naira has been disbursed to support students and education institutions

00:42across the country after the first of this month. Mr. Ndesoya joins me now for more on

00:47the fund's 2025 strategy and the skill acquisitions program. Thank you so much for your time today,

00:53sir. And before we get into what you're planning to do for this year, I'd like to take a step

00:58back to assess, you know, how this fund has performed so far. $116 billion is disbursed,

01:04but speak to us as to, you know, the performance of the fund allocated so far.

01:09Okay, thank you very much. First of all, let me comment on, you know, where we are today.

01:20We are at 458,000 registrants for the loan itself. So people who've actually registered

01:28for the loan. We're closing in on 360,000 people who we've never met, who are actually

01:35approved and are receiving funds or benefit from this. To date, we've actually disbursed

01:41$18 billion, well, nearly $19 billion. Remember, because we're doing a monthly upkeep, we're

01:49sending money to students every month. The money we have ring-fenced may not have been

01:54disbursed in full, but we have to ring-fence it to ensure that it doesn't actually go missing,

02:02if you like. So our actual disbursements are to 176,252 students. That's $18 billion. But

02:14our commitment is close to $118 billion.

02:19All right, but in the work that you're doing, feedback is very important. And I'm trying

02:26to imagine what that feedback has been from the student community, who you're serving.

02:32Okay, so you know, one of the beautiful things about all of this is that the student community

02:37is very vocal, they're very active. We obviously do follow-ups ourselves to see what feedback

02:43there is out there. We have a very active portal, we have a very active ex-handle,

02:50and we get a lot of feedback, particularly from those who have benefited from the loan.

02:58We also get feedback from parents, from families, from people who are taking care of these students.

03:05And the feedback has been extremely positive. The funds are flowing. The other piece of

03:10feedback that we get is from the institutions themselves. So the institutions write to us

03:16and tell us exactly how much they've received. This incredibly laudable program set up by

03:23the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinombu, His Excellency,

03:28is amazing, because for the first time, where you've seen programs like this in government,

03:36it's actually transparent from one to the other. And I think what you're seeing with

03:41the President is his support of this, is to emphasize and underline the importance to

03:46him of transparency in these sorts of social investment programs.

03:51So let's get into your new strategy now, and can you share the details with us, and also

03:56tell us how you're incorporating the feedback you're getting from the institutions and even

04:00the student community into your strategy?

04:04Okay, so I presume that by the strategy you're referring to our skills acquisition program.

04:09So one of the things that was built into the law was that besides the academic program,

04:14we're going to do a vocational skills acquisition program as well. We're about the content of

04:24data, the importance of being able to track beneficiaries at the point of application,

04:29and to be able to track them at the point of exiting the learning process. We estimate

04:36that we, through the funds committed to this agency, can affect about 50 million lives.

04:42What we do is we visualize this as a pyramid structure, where the people at the very bottom

04:49are the poorest or the most challenged in terms of their ability to earn a living. And

04:55what we intend to do is to push everybody up one step. We believe in a situation where

05:09people are more employable. We're also able to be in a situation where we create more

05:13jobs. We're going to be looking at how we regulate and certificate people who are coming

05:18on the skills program, and these are going to be national certification that will be

05:24made available so that people are employed, people have dignity of labor, they have status

05:29in the jobs that they're doing. We don't just want to train people and send them back out.

05:32We have a comprehensive strategy with a landing point of people who will be fully trackable.

05:40We've learned a lot from the exercise we've carried out over the last year. We're going

05:43to inject all that learning into the skills acquisition program, which we think is much

05:47bigger, much more impactful, and much more meaningful for the nation.

05:51Yeah, because you kind of took my next question out of a map with your final comments there,

05:56talking about the biggest learning curve from the work that you've done so far and how you

06:00have also incorporated that into this skills acquisition program. I can imagine that data

06:06is something that you're dealing with quite a lot, and I'm trying to imagine how you're

06:10using data in your processes. Is there a use of AI, or how are you interpreting this information

06:17that you're getting in a more efficient manner?

06:21And transparent manner.

06:23Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure I heard the question properly. I think we have a few connectivity

06:28issues. But what I will say is that we've gathered a lot of information. The way we

06:32want to run the skills acquisition program is that we want the beneficiaries to come

06:37through specific associations, clubs, cooperatives, unions, associations, and communities. At

06:47this level, we can gather quite a lot of data about the individuals. We can gather data

06:52about what skills they need. We can gather data about who they are. The other thing I

06:57should tell you is that we're taking a very focused look at every single region of the

07:02country, every single state in the country, every single hamlet in the country, to see

07:07what skills are required in those places, so that we're training to demand. We're not

07:13just training for the sake of training. We're training to demand, so we're looking very,

07:17very closely at, as I said, how we gather the data on the individuals, how we document

07:25people, what we're going to give to the specific requirements or demand. And so there are technologies

07:40that are coming into this country now, aiming to impact the future, because we want to look

07:44at emerging technologies, and we want to make sure that we've got an army of people

07:47who can actually address the technologies and the technological changes and the socio-economic

07:52changes that are going to happen. The world is changing at a rapid pace. We're trying

07:55to stay abreast of that, and we want to train to meet that speed.

07:59Because now I'm looking at the scope of your work. First, it's an education loan fund,

08:05now venturing into skills acquisition. I'm trying to imagine what your plans are in terms

08:09of improving your portfolio of initiatives within the Nelfond ecosystem.

08:13I'm sorry, can you repeat the last part of that question?

08:19The plans to improve the portfolio of initiatives under the Nelfond ecosystem, because now we're

08:24starting from a student loan fund, which is now going to skills acquisition. I'm trying

08:29to imagine what the next tangent here is for Nelfond.

08:33We're going to be working with a myriad of skills centres across the country, skill centres

08:40that are already equipped. We're working very closely with those who provide certification

08:45for skills, globally recognised international certification for skills. We're looking at

08:51areas for anything from carpentry all the way up to aviation. I'll give you an example.

08:58Just talking about aviation for a second, all aircraft that have come into this country

09:03that have a problem have to be taken out or engineers have to be flown in to come and

09:08repair them. That's bleeding this economy of millions and millions of dollars. We're

09:14going to address that because we need to retain any funds we can retain in this country. We're

09:19going to use training to address that. At the lower end of the scale, we have lots of

09:24artisans, lots of people working in blue-collar jobs who are not certificated. They're not

09:31assessed to see whether they're fit for the jobs that they're doing, however risky, however

09:37difficult. We're looking at retraining, so we train, we look at retraining, we look at

09:42certification. It's across the spectrum, as I said, from carpentry all the way through

09:48to aviation. We're going to look at them and everything in between. Obviously, the issues

09:55at the bottom of the pyramid are more to do with restiveness. We believe that we can quell

10:02and pacify quite a lot of the frustration sitting at the bottom of the pyramid in this

10:07country that's leading to banditry, to robbery, leading to insurgency. We want to actually

10:16make this very meaningful for this country, and we're going to do it in the most transparent

10:21way possible. We're not going to allow any interference in terms of wanting to change

10:27the strategy that will expose the fund to any risk. This is what the President wants.

10:34This is what we're going to do. We're going to deliver on his promise. We're going to

10:38do it in a transparent, focused, and objective way, and the Skills Acquisition Programme

10:45is going to help us do that.

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