Two vice-chancellors have reopened one of the most persistent arguments in Nigeria’s tertiary education sector, pressing the Federal Government to extend the Nigerian Education Loan Fund to students in private universities. They say thousands of young Nigerians are being shut out of public support simply because of the type of school they attend.
The Vice-Chancellor of Bowen University, Iwo, Professor Jonathan Babalola, and his Kola Daisi University counterpart, Professor Olajumoke Morenikeji, made the call at separate briefings ahead of their institutions’ convocation ceremonies. Both rejected the long-standing assumption that every student in a fee-paying private university comes from a wealthy home, arguing that many families turn to private institutions only because public universities cannot absorb the number of qualified candidates seeking admission.
NELFUND was created under the Students Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act, which President Bola Tinubu first signed in 2023 and re-enacted in April 2024 after the original law was faulted as too restrictive. The revised law removed a N500,000 household income ceiling, scrapped the requirement for guarantors and introduced a monthly upkeep allowance, currently set at N20,000, paid directly to beneficiaries alongside tuition that goes straight to their institutions.
The scheme has grown quickly. According to NELFUND, total disbursements reached about N372.62 billion by early October 2026, made up of N192.89 billion in institutional fees paid to 319 beneficiary institutions and N179.73 billion released to students as upkeep. The fund said it had processed more than 1.6 million applications since the portal opened on 24 May 2024, up from the N206.29 billion disbursed to 1.16 million beneficiaries it recorded in March.
For all that reach, the scheme remains closed to students in private universities, and the government has defended that boundary. The fund’s managing director, Akintunde Sawyerr, has repeatedly explained that the enabling Act ties the loans to public institutions, and that the scheme is designed to reach students most in need. He has argued that a single private university fee, which can run into millions of naira a year, could cover many students in a public university where charges are a fraction of that, and has pointed to limited data on private students’ financial circumstances. Sawyerr has, however, described the exclusion as temporary rather than permanent, saying the scheme could be opened up in the future.
The debate matters because of how large the private sector has become. National Universities Commission figures show Nigeria now has more than 160 private universities, outnumbering its federal and state institutions combined, yet private universities account for less than a tenth of the roughly two million admission places sought each year.
Babalola described the exclusion as unfair, arguing that if public funds are drawn from all Nigerians, all Nigerian students should be able to share in them. He also urged that research grants under the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, from which private universities are likewise excluded, be channelled to individual lecturers so the country benefits from their work. Morenikeji made a similar case, saying the government should weigh the circumstances of individual students rather than the ownership of their institutions when shaping policies meant to widen access to higher education.
The two are not the first to press the point. The founder of Afe Babalola University, Afe Babalola, and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who owns Bell University of Technology, have both argued that the children of taxpayers should not be penalised for attending private schools, since those institutions and the parents who fund them also pay taxes.
Whether the government will shift remains unclear. No change to the eligibility rules has been announced, and any expansion would raise hard questions about cost, how to verify need among students paying widely differing fees, and how far a publicly funded scheme should subsidise private education. For now, the money disbursed so far continues to flow only to public institutions, even as the voices calling for a wider net grow louder with each convocation season.