Will you cancel NELFUND, and what is your plan for student loans and education costs?

Q30: Many intelligent students cannot afford university or even remain in school because their families are poor. What financial support will your government provide? Answer: My administration will provide non-repayable scholarships, grants, and bursaries instead of forcing students into debt, while forgiving existing student loan obligations and directly reducing university tuition costs for low-income families.

Tinubu’s policy on age limit for tertiary education admission belongs in the Stone Ages. The recent policy of the Federal Ministry of Education pegging age limits for entry to tertiary institutions is an absurdity and a disincentive to scholarship. The policy runs foul of the notion of delineation of responsibilities in a federal system of government such as we are pratising, and gives a graphic impression of how the Tinubu government behaves like a lost sailor on a high sea. Otherwise, how is such anti-scholarship regulation the next logical step in the myriad of issues besetting our educational system? To be clear, the Nigerian constitution puts education in the concurrent list of schedules, in which the sub-national government enjoys more roles above the federal government. Therefore, it is extra-constitutional for the federal government to legislate on education in a manner similar to a decree.

I have followed the intense public discourse on the Tax Reform Bills with keen interest. Nigerians are united in their call for a fiscal system that promotes justice, fairness, and equity. They are loud and clear that the fiscal system we seek to promote must not exacerbate the uneven development of the federating units by enhancing the status of a few states while unduly penalising others. I call for objectivity and transparency in the conduct of the public hearing being organised by our representatives in the National Assembly. As a concerned stakeholder, I firmly believe that transparency and objectivity are essential for promoting accountability, good governance, and public trust in policy-making. The public hearing process must facilitate open and inclusive participation by all stakeholders, including Civil Society Organizations, traditional institutions, politicians, public officials, and subject matter experts.

We urge the people not to be silenced. Raise your voices. Demand accountability. Demand justice. Demand a government that sees you, hears you, and protects you. History will not be kind to those who chose power over people. The time to act is now. -AA

The cruelty of the moment was sharpened by timing and tone. After months of cries from students and parents over unpaid allowances, the authorities announced the suspension with a levity that stunned those already on the brink. Between September and December 2023, the students were not paid, and in 2024, stipends were slashed by 56 per cent, from $500 to $220 a month, before stopping altogether. There was no payment throughout the whole of 2025. I gathered that hunger, rent arrears, and shame have become the daily companions of the beneficiary students. In Morocco, one student did not survive the ordeal, dying in November last year and turning quiet suffering into public grief. Parents and scholars poured into the streets of Abuja, protesting before the Ministries of Education and Finance, their placards heavy with sorrow and rage, their questions unanswered. Then came the final wound: defiance dressed as policy. In a press statement, the minister declared that any student “fed up” could be financed to return home, as though abandoning years of study and shattered dreams were a minor administrative detail. To anxious parents, it sounded like expulsion by neglect, Nigeria casting off its brightest children and leaving them to become objects of pity among peers from African countries that honour their obligations.

A Nigerian earning the ₦70,000 statutory minimum wage requires ₦56,000 merely to buy 40 litres of petrol at ₦1,400 per litre. That is 80 per cent of an entire month’s minimum wage. Before that worker buys food, pays rent, electricity, school fees or medical bills, four-fifths of his monthly wage can disappear into just 40 litres of petrol. Meanwhile, citizens of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE generally earn vastly more while paying less per litre. That is the human face missing from your economic argument. And the pain does not end at the petrol station. Take the woman selling tomatoes at Mile 12. The farmer pays for energy to cultivate. A vehicle moves the tomatoes from the farm. Another truck carries them hundreds of kilometres to Lagos. The wholesaler pays transport. The retailer pays transport again. By the time those tomatoes reach the mother preparing dinner, expensive fuel has entered the final price several times over.

It is fundamentally different from allowing living costs to explode, watching Nigerians struggle with hunger and unaffordable healthcare, and then arriving close to an election with another round of emergency handouts. And, Bola, your attempt to use NELFUND as a shield against Atiku’s cost-of-living proposal is even more dishonest. You now want Nigerians to believe that making fuel cheaper will somehow threaten student loans, workers’ salaries and the minimum wage. That is fearmongering dressed up as economics. Celebrating NELFUND as proof that education has become affordable under your government is like setting school fees on fire and then boasting that you lent students a bucket of water. What exactly is the wisdom in presiding over dramatic increases in school fees in some institutions, only to turn around and celebrate loans as the solution? You make education more expensive, lend students money to survive the increase, and then demand applause for the rescue. That is not affordability. It is witchcraft economics: create the burden with one hand, offer debt with the other, and demand applause for the intervention.

The good news for Nigerian students is that Atiku has reviewed the current student-loan policy and believes education should not begin with a mountain of debt hanging over a young Nigerian’s future. His approach will reduce the underlying cost of education and, after review, provide forgiveness for qualifying student debts so that young Nigerians can graduate with hope rather than repayment burdens. Education should open doors, not mortgage the future. A student loan is not a scholarship. It is a liability. The proper test of an education policy is whether ordinary families can educate their children without being pushed into debt merely to keep them in school. When students increasingly require loans because the underlying cost of education has become prohibitive, government should not parade the loan itself as evidence that the system is working. And your attempt to frighten students and workers by claiming that Atiku’s targeted and capped production support will somehow destroy NELFUND, reduce salaries or reverse the minimum wage is a fallacious claim without a ledger behind it. If your government has the arithmetic, Bola, publish it. Show Nigerians, line by line, how a transparently budgeted subsidy tied to Nigerian crude and domestic refining suddenly empties NELFUND or workers’ pay packets.

Atiku’s argument is precisely the opposite. Reduce the cost of energy so that salaries buy more. Reduce transport costs so that less of a worker’s wage disappears merely getting to work. Reduce the cost of moving food so families spend less in the market. Reduce the cost of living so students spend less on upkeep and parents have more money left after food, rent and transportation. You cannot make life painfully expensive, push students towards debt to survive the consequences, and then frighten those same students that cheaper fuel will take their loans away. Nor can you tell workers that a policy designed to restore value to their wages will somehow take those wages from them. That is not economic reform. It is scarecrow propaganda built on witchcraft economics. And while you celebrate statistics, Nigerians still deserve answers about the enormous sums surrounding your so-called reforms. Your government says subsidy removal mobilised about ₦15.8 trillion between June 2023 and December 2025. Nigerians surrendered cheap fuel. They paid more for transportation. They paid more for food. They watched the value of their wages collapse. So what measurable improvement reached the average Nigerian household in exchange for that sacrifice?

“Our proposal is clear: support domestic production, reduce the cost of crude going into Nigerian refineries, protect legitimate refinery margins and ensure that lower production costs translate into lower costs for Nigerians.” Atiku said the Presidency should stop inventing a policy for him and then attacking the fiction it created. “We have been clear from the beginning. “We are restoring subsidy through a production model. “We are proposing a production subsidy not an import subsidy. We are not proposing to subsidise petrol refined abroad. We are not proposing to force Dangote or any other Nigerian refinery to sell below cost. “We are proposing targeted support for crude refined here in Nigeria so that domestic refineries can produce more competitively, expand capacity, create jobs and sell fuel at a price Nigerians can better afford.

We will introduce a capped, budgeted production subsidy tied to verified fuel refined in Nigeria, including fuel from modular refineries. Imported petrol will not qualify. The benefit must reach consumers through lower pump prices. We will publish the costs, independently audit the payments and cut government waste to help fund the programme. The principle is simple: produce here, refine here, create jobs here and pay less here. If Bola disagrees, he should answer the proposal on its merits. Calling relief an addiction will not lower the price of petrol. Bola, your speech is full of “we will.” We will make farming cheaper. We will power factories. We will create jobs. We will bring down prices. You have been President for more than three years. Nigerians are entitled to ask what you have done with the time already given to you. You say that when farmers produce more cheaply and manufacturers spend less on electricity, prices will fall. Of course they will. But farmers and manufacturers are telling you that they cannot produce cheaply now. A farmer who cannot safely reach his field cannot wait for your theory of cheaper food. A factory paying more to keep its machines running cannot wait for another promise of industrial growth.

● Within the first 100 days, declare a national emergency on out-of-school children and convene a National Education Summit to develop and implement a clear action plan ● Partner with states and local governments to identify and return out-of-school children to classrooms through targeted outreach ● Declare a state of emergency in technical and vocational education, expanding skills training centres and aligning them with industry needs ● Provide student loans and financing support to enable young Nigerians to access technical and vocational education. ● Integrate vocational training into secondary education to create multiple pathways for learning and employment 2. Reform UBEC for accountability and results We will restructure the Universal Basic Education system to ensure funds are efficiently used, transparently managed, and tied to measurable outcomes. Details: ● Reform the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) to focus on students, not fund administration. ● Simplify access to UBEC funds for states while enforcing strict accountability and reporting standards ● Digitize UBEC processes to track fund disbursement, school performance, and project implementation in real time

I have spoken to this directly: when I did not accept the 2023 presidential election result, I said so plainly. I respected the judgment of the court, but I refused to accept it, because I believed it fell short of substantial justice. I did not stop there, I asked my lawyers to activate my right of appeal, all the way to the Supreme Court, rather than take any action outside the law. My conviction is that any dispute over an outcome belongs in the courts, pursued through fair hearing, so that confidence in our democracy can be strengthened rather than broken.

Yes, I believe in accountable leadership, and I have never shied away from declaring my assets. I have said plainly that I am never one to be found wanting when it comes to probity, and I have publicly disclosed significant business dealings before, including making public the sale of my shares in Integrated Logistic Services Nigeria Limited (Intels) to Orlean Investment Group in January 2021. That is the standard I hold myself to, and it is the standard I will carry with me into office.