{"id":13877,"date":"2025-05-05T12:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T12:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/?p=13877"},"modified":"2025-05-05T12:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T12:46:09","slug":"nelfund-against-a-culture-of-impunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/05\/nelfund-against-a-culture-of-impunity\/","title":{"rendered":"NELFUND: Against a Culture of Impunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dakuku Peterside\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, better known as NELFUND, was unveiled, it landed like a spark in a dry forest of despair. It brought a glimmer of hope,\u00a0like\u00a0a bold attempt to democratise access to higher education in a country where tuition fees are a barricade and scholarships are too few, too politicised, or too elitist. The idea was simple: interest-free student loans, disbursed through an automated and digitally tracked platform with zero human interference. For students who have long watched their dreams deferred by poverty, this was more than a policy;\u00a0it was a lifeline.\u00a0\u202fFor many first\u2011generation undergraduates, it promised to end the humiliating routine of begging relatives, hawking phone cards or pausing degrees.\u00a0The phrase\u00a0\u201cgame-changer\u201d\u00a0was on everyone\u2019s lips.<\/p>\n

But hardened by history, Nigerians know that nothing bright survives long in a system riddled with rot. Almost immediately, allegations swirled that money had already begun to vanish from the scheme.\u00a0Some universities\u00a0\u00a0allegedly misappropriated student loans by making illegal deductions from NELFUND student loans.Certain\u00a0\u00a0university\u00a0officials are taxing loans given to students for their selfish gain.\u00a0NELFUND swiftly dismissed the reports as reckless misinformation. Still, the damage was done. In a country where corruption is both epidemic and endemic, citizens don\u2019t wait for audits or court rulings. They trust their gut. And their gut tells them that anything involving public money is already compromised.\u00a0Nigerians know too well that even the most visionary programmes can be bled dry by the country\u2019s stubborn corruption crisis.<\/p>\n

This instinct isn\u2019t paranoia; it\u2019s pattern recognition. Nigeria\u2019s corruption problem is not just a matter of lack of transparency or stolen funds. It\u2019s a deeply embedded culture of impunity where influential individuals manipulate public institutions like personal ATMs and emerge unscathed.\u00a0From misallocated security votes to inflated procurement contracts, Nigerian public life is littered with episodes in which influential actors,\u00a0politicians, regulators, and even some law enforcement agents,\u00a0mishandle or misappropriate funds with little fear of sanction.\u00a0Often, officials caught in massive scandals are celebrated months later as elder statesmen or traditional title holders. Investigations go cold. Probes fizzle. Court cases drag on for years without resolution. It\u2019s not just about the looting; it\u2019s the sense that nothing will ever happen to the looters.\u00a0This pattern breeds a sense that looting the public purse is not a crime but a career path.<\/p>\n

But the very scale that makes NELFUND transformative also makes it attractive prey. Experience shows that dedicated accounts can be hacked, payment queues quietly rerouted, and datasets tampered with in return for kickbacks. When such manipulation occurs in education finance, the damage is generational: courses are abandoned, research labs fall silent, and an already skills-starved economy stumbles further. In effect, stealing student loan funds is stealing the country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

The corruption\u00a0culture has now come under sharp focus again, this time through the jaw-dropping revelations from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Since 2021, nearly $3 billion has been earmarked for\u00a0\u201cquick-fix\u201d\u00a0refurbishments of the country\u2019s three state-owned refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna. The promises were grand. Press conferences were held. Cameras rolled. But within weeks of their so-called resumption, the refineries ground to a halt. Warri shut down entirely within a month; Port Harcourt barely sputtered at less than 40% capacity. Kaduna never really started.<\/p>\n

Then came the real thunderclap: the EFCC launched sweeping investigations into the use of the funds. Three managing directors were arrested, and \u20a680 billion\u00a0was allegedly\u00a0found sitting in the personal accounts of one of them,\u00a0whether it is true or not,\u00a0this\u00a0raises a red flag, especially against the background of trillions of Naira spent on rehabilitation of non-functional refineries.\u00a0Thirteen senior executives, including former Group CEO\u00a0Mele\u00a0Kyari, were named in official documents. The probe\u2019s scope is vast, touching every level of NNPCL\u2019s leadership during the disbursement period. Energy experts were not surprised. They had long warned that the televised\u00a0recommissioning\u00a0ceremonies were theatre, not substance. One described it as\u00a0\u201ca charade.\u201d\u00a0And now, that assessment appears tragically accurate.<\/p>\n

The episode has become a national morality play: billions vanish, steel tanks fall silent, workers fume, and consumers pay more\u2014and, until those arrests, few insiders expected real consequences.\u202fAgainst that backdrop, it is obvious why a digital student\u2011loan platform, no matter how cleverly coded, can feel one scandal away from derailment.<\/p>\n

The parallels between this refinery disaster and the looming threats around NELFUND are unmistakable. Both involve essential national priorities, energy and education,\u00a0and require vast public investment. Both were launched with great fanfare. And both operate in a governance ecosystem that rewards mismanagement and punishes transparency. The refinery funds went up in smoke, quite literally. If the structural weaknesses aren\u2019t addressed, NELFUND could follow the same path, and we must prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dakuku Peterside\u00a0 When the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, better known as NELFUND, was unveiled, it landed like a spark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-grassroots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13879,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions\/13879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}