Students to be linked to skills demand – NELFund

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELfund, Akintunde Sawyerr, said the agency is set to link students with skills demand and job opportunities upon graduation.

He said the agency was observing courses being funded by NELfund and the prospects of job opportunities.

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This is even as the CEO said there was a broader effort to ensure that government’s investment in student education produces skills required by the economy.

Speaking on Channels Television on ‘Politics Today’, the NELfund CEO said it has started analysing the ever increasing demand for its loans and determine whether the courses being financed correspond with Nigeria’s future workforce needs.

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“As we move forward, as we see how the demand is growing, we are now starting to analyse the figures. We are starting to try to understand what it is we are paying for,” he said.

According to him, the Federal Government’s wider education reforms, including efforts to set standards, strengthen accreditation and determine the courses required for national development, would influence the direction of NELFund’s funding.

“We will fit into that scheme and fund, alongside those initiatives, the actual programmes that are going to make a difference in Nigeria,” he said.

Sawyerr said the Fund would increasingly ask two critical questions: “What sort of jobs are available? What sort of skills are required to get those jobs”, stressing that the motive was not
to continue financing tertiary education without considering what happens to beneficiaries after graduation.

“We are not just going to be paying for courses going forward,” he said.

The NELFund chief said the student-loan model itself could encourage beneficiaries to think more carefully about the courses and institutions they choose because they would eventually be required to repay the money.

“If you have to pay back money for something that you have borrowed, you are likely to be more considerate about the course you are going to take,” he said.

“You are likely to look more closely into what sort of job opportunities there are thereafter.”

He said this could ultimately encourage students to pursue programmes with stronger employment prospects while creating competition among tertiary institutions to attract students whose education is being financed through NELFund.

“One of the other things you are going to see over time—and this doesn’t happen overnight—is competition between institutions to attract the funding that NELFund is backing students with,” Sawyerr said.

The Fund’s planned shift toward employability comes as NELFund records rapidly growing demand for its intervention.

Sawyerr said the Fund had received about 1.8 million applications, of which 1.659 million had been processed, with just under one million students becoming beneficiaries.

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