President Bola Tinubu on Monday signed into law a bill that provides interest-free education loans for Nigerians willing to acquire tertiary education.
The Access to Higher Education Act, 2023, otherwise known as students loan Act, establishes an Education Loan Fund to help Nigerians fund their higher education, while they pay in instalments two years after completing their participation in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.
The bill, first introduced in 2016 by Femi Gbajabiamila, the immediate past Speaker of the House of Representatives, was reintroduced in 2019 and received more attention from the National Assembly in November 2022. It was barely a month after the end of an eight-month-long industrial action by the nation’s university workers’ union who had protested poor working conditions, among other demands.
Here are some key information about the Act:
Education Loan Fund
The Act establishes the Nigerian Education Loan Fund which is expected to…