Is a student loan the same as a scholarship?

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.