By Mercy Ofuyah
President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Lucky Emonefe says the leadership of the student body will on Monday meet with officials of the federal government in Abuja to fine-tune the launch of the Student Loan Scheme.
Speaking with journalists this weekend, Emonefe says NAN is interested in modalities put in place for the Scheme to work.
According to him, major areas of concern include requirements that say the income or family income of an applicant must not exceed five hundred thousand naira per annum, and the applicant should be able to provide two guarantors who must be civil servants and be on level 12 or above.
“I hope that the concerns that have arisen over the scheme will be taken care of properly during this meeting so that more students can benefit before the scheme will take off,” he said.
Also speaking on the issue, Dr Niyi Sunmonu, National president of the Congress of University Academics (CONUA) said “As a congress, we have long expected that the federal government would have done everything necessary for the scheme to have taken off even before now and we hope that the government truly means to help alleviate the hardship on students so that it can pave the way for many more to gain access to higher education of learning’.
He expressed doubts that the Scheme will take off in January 2024, especially for the number of bottlenecks associated with it.
On his part, the President of the National Parents Teachers Association, Haruna Danjuma, said “As parents, none of us was invited or consulted at any stage of the planning for the scheme. Our suggestions and opinions as critical stakeholders and parents in the Education system obviously does not seem to be important since the government feels that we are not important”.
