“Convert Student Loan to grants for poor Students, student loan is impracticable” – ASUU tells Tinubu

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has requested that President Bola Tinubu amend the recently passed Students Loans Act to include grants for destitute students.

“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,” ASUU National President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke said on Channels Television on Sunday, June 18.

“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.”

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

The law provides for interest-free loans to poor Nigerian students.

The bill was sponsored by the Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who is now the President’s Chief of Staff. But Osideke said the loan is impracticable and “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.