The Chief of Staff President, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, has stated that preparations are being made to ensure the launch of the Students’ Loan Scheme in January 2024, allowing Nigerian students to pursue their educational dreams.
The chief of staff to the president made the disclosure in Lagos on Friday while delivering a lecture titled “Empowering Nigerian Youths in the Present Day Economy” at the 35th convocation ceremony of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH).
He noted that to make the process seamless, “applicants will apply online, be verified online, and be credited based on the verifiable documents and credentials they have submitted.”
He stated that, “Earlier this year, His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR signed the Students’ Loan (Access to Higher Education) Act, establishing the Education Loan Fund and creating a new legal framework to provide education financing through interest-free loans to Nigerian students.
“Efforts are underway to ensure that by January 2024, Nigerian students can access these loans to fund their educational aspirations.
“The application system for the student loan program is being designed so that there is no interface between the loan administrators and the beneficiaries.”
The former speaker of the House of Assembly noted that “Applicants will apply online, be verified online, and be credited based on the verifiable documents and credentials they have submitted.
“Nobody will need to know anybody to qualify for these loans, so access to this financing will be genuinely egalitarian.
“The student loan system answers part of the question of how to fund a quality public tertiary education but doesn’t answer all of it. Any serious conversation about the future of tertiary education in Nigeria must include a thorough consideration of the ways and means of addressing the funding needs of public tertiary institutions beyond government subvention.”
“In this regard, we cannot for much longer avoid the simple truth that tertiary education costs money, and the best institutions worldwide succeed, amongst other things, because they can generate significant sums through fees, investments, and other means.
“The simple truth is that for our institutions to compete favorably, we need more resources than are currently available to address the dangerous decline in the quality of scholarship and academic output and the graduates we produce from many of our institutions,” he added.
He claimed that in an ideal society, access to education will be a fundamental advantage provided to all individuals from elementary to tertiary levels. And our learning centers will be grand citadels of study and invention, accessible to everyone who seeks knowledge, regardless of financial resources.
However, this is not a perfect world. In today’s society, education is a commodity, and a good education is much more so.
As a result, the key public policy dilemma is the tension between competing access and quality objectives.
How do we fund a high-quality postsecondary education without imposing prohibitively high expenses on the majority of people?
“We require a program of aggressive and sustained investment in education. not only in the physical infrastructure of classrooms and lecture halls but in technology hardware and software to facilitate information exchange and innovation.
Dr. Ibraheem Abdul, Rector of the College, stated that the institution is focused on youth empowerment through its various programs and that the management established an Industry Advisory Committee to enhance her dynamic role of producing technical manpower for Nigeria’s economic and social development.
According to him, the college has been at the forefront of manpower development, technical advancement, and youth empowerment.
The Quadruple Helix Collaboration Scheme for Youth Empowerment is one of the school’s initiatives aimed at youth empowerment, as mentioned by the Rector.
