The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says the
federal government should convert the student loan act to a grant.
Speaking on Channels Television on Monday, Emmanuel Osodeke,
ASUU president, said the federal government should have considered room for a
collective bargain from all sides before signing the bill into law.
Osodeke said the condition of the loan is not sustainable,
adding that beneficiaries of similar initiatives in other countries were
committing suicide due to the debts incurred.
NigerianEye cannot independently verify the claim made by
the ASUU president.
President Bola Tinubu signed the student loan bill into law
on June 12.
The bill sponsored by Femi Gbajabiamila, immediate past
speaker of the house of representatives, seeks to provide financial assistance
to poor Nigerians to fund their education.
Beneficiaries of the loan will commence repayment after two
years of completing the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
The ASUU president said 90 percent of Nigerian students will
not be able to meet the “stringent requirements” to access and repay the loan.
“Some of these sources of income are there but we are
believing that this would have been better if we are going to give it to those
sets of students who are very poor. It will be called a grant, not a loan,” he
said.
“Since it is coming from the federation account, it should
be called a grant so that these people can have access and not when they are
graduating, they will be carrying heavy loads behind them and when they don’t
pay within two years, they go to jail.
“The law also says for you to have the loan, you must have
two guarantors who are level 12 officers in civil service or a lawyer of 10
years. How many people from those villages have access to the calibre of people
and how many Nigerians would want to stand as guarantors if they know they go
to jail if the beneficiaries do not pay?
“The idea of student
loans came in 1972 and it was in a bank established. People who took loans
never paid.
“In 1994, 1993, the military enacted Decree 50 and 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.
“We as a union also did a 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.
“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.”
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