Change and convert students loan to grant, ASUU tells Tinubu

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU has asked President Bola Tinubu to change the new Students Loans Act to an education grant for indigent students.

The ASUU National President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke stated this on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.

According to the ASUU President, more than 90% of students won’t meet the “stringent requirements” to access and repay the loan.

Osodeke said, “This would have been better if we are giving it to those set of students who are very poor, it should be called a grant, not a loan,”

“It should be called a grant since it is coming from the Federation Account and not that (after) these people have access it and when they are graduating, they have heavy loads behind them and within two years, if they don’t pay, they go to jail. That’s why we’re talking about collective bargaining, you have views from all the sides.”

Recall that, on Monday, Tinubu signed into law the Students Loans Bill in fulfilment of a promise he made during his campaign.

The bill, sponsored by the immediate past Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila and the current Chief of Staff, provides for interest-free loans to poor Nigerian students.

However, the ASUU President said the loan is impracticable, adding that the loan is “not sustainable”.

Osodeke said, “The idea of student loan came in 1972 and it was in a bank established. People who took loans never paid, you can go and investigate. In 1994, 1993, the military enacted Decree 50 also set up a Students’ Loan Board. The National Assembly domesticated it in 2004 and within a year, it went off. The money disappeared. We want to see how this one will be different.”

According to him, there are more than one million students in Nigerian public universities and the loan cannot adequately cater for students’ tuition.

The ASUU President said the conditions for the loan are “not practicable”, adding that more than 90% of students won’t meet the “stringent requirements” to access and repay the loan.

He said, “We, as a union also did research of countries all over the world, of people who have benefited from this loan, they were committing suicide. Recently, (President Joe) Biden is trying to pay back the bank loans of some who borrowed in the US,” he said.

“It is better to look for alternative means of funding education than to encumber students whose parents earn N30,000 a month with a loan.”

Many Nigerians are averse to the students loan recently signed into law as they question some of aspects of bill. For instance many parents are wary of their children ending up in jail if they default in the loan repayment. This is essentially because of high rate of unemployment which may make it difficult for beneficiaries of the loan to rapay.

A parent that has his daughter at federal university of technology Owerri (FUTO) vowed never to allow her daughter touch the loan instead he will strive and train her daughter without any encumbering loan

Also some Nigerians are warning the federal government not to use the students loan to introduce tuition fees in federal and state universities as that will amount to great injustice.

Their argument is based on the fact that since a minute significant of students taking the loan will not justify introduction of tuition fees in the universities.