The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has stated that the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will not affect its operations.
Sawyerr made this statement while appearing in an interview with Channels Television’s programme, Morning Brief, on Tuesday.
According to him, the ongoing negotiations between the Federal Government and ASUU under the leadership of the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, would produce fair and positive outcomes.
“As you are aware, the strike has only just commenced, and I know that under the excellent leadership of the Honourable Minister for Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, the negotiations will continue to move forward,” Sawyerr noted.
Sawyerr added that NELFUND remained confident that the ministry’s plans “will seek to be fair and equitable and will derive the right results,” assuring that the development “will not impact our operations because what the Federal Government has done with NELFUND is put a scheme in place that will address in many ways some of the issues in education.”
“I don’t think this should be jeopardised at all,” he continued. “Even though the funding that NELFUND is providing is for students, the rest of the ‘pie,’ if you like, is also being addressed by the excellent leadership of Dr. Tunji Alausa. So I would not want to preempt those discussions, those negotiations, those positions.”
He stated that the agency does not want students to be negatively affected by the strike, while emphasising the importance of closely monitoring the developments before making any official pronouncements.
“The reality of it is that we don’t want to see students affected negatively in any way,” he said. “Having said that, we need to be very close to the discussions and look closely at how this unfolds for us to begin to make pronouncements as to what will be affected by NELFUND,” Sawyeer told Channels Television.
President Bola Tinubu introduced the NELFUND student loan scheme in 2024, signing the Student Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act on April 3, 2024, and formally launching the fund on July 17, 2024.
As of August 11, 2025, a total of 720,732 students had successfully applied for a NELFUND loan, with 731,140 students having registered on the portal.
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