The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyerr, has assured that the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will not affect the agency’s operations.
Sawyerr made this known during an interview on Channels Television’s Morning Brief programme on Tuesday.
According to him, the ongoing discussions between the Federal Government and ASUU, led by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, are expected to yield fair and constructive results.
“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.
He added that NELFUND remains confident that the ministry’s approach “will seek to be fair and equitable and will derive the right results,” assuring that the strike “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.”
Sawyerr further emphasised that the agency’s priority is to ensure that students are not negatively impacted by the ongoing strike, noting that NELFUND is monitoring developments closely 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,” Sawyerr 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, before formally launching the fund on July 17, 2024.
As of August 11, 2025, a total of 720,732 students had successfully applied for the NELFUND loan, while 731,140 students had registered on the portal.
