President Tinubu recently signed into law a bill establishing a Students Loan Fund.
Less than a week after President Bola Tinubu signed a bill to establish a Students Loan Fund to provide interest-free loans to citizens seeking higher education, a political economist, Abiola Metilelu, has called for its amendment.
The bill "Students Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act, 2023" was passed by the 9th National Assembly but was declined assent by former President Muhammadu.
But his successor, Mr Tinubu, on Monday assented to the bill whose provisions were parts of his campaign manifesto - to establish an education bank to enhance access to quality education at the tertiary level.
Speaking on a television programme, "Focus Nigeria", aired by Africa Independent Television on Thursday, Mr Metilelu called for the amendment of the Act to address a "missing component."
Mr Metilelu, a techpreneur, is the chief executive officer of PressPayNG, a company that offers students in tertiary education creative and easy ways to pay school fees,
"Section 7 (2) of the Act talks about the composition of a special committee, an aggregate of all the relevant persons within the ecosystem, but it omitted a significant component of that representation which is the student body itself.
"The Act must be amended so that it makes provision for the student body to be represented on the table to provide advisory roles and to also serve as a potent instrument for feedback mechanism. That, again, is a concern to me.
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"Education is the bedrock of development and economic empowerment. If we spend more on education, we are going to spend less on insecurity because educated people will always make informed decisions," he said
Mr Metilelu described the Act as the right step in the right direction and commended President Tinubu for exercising the political will to make tertiary education accessible and affordable
He further described the Act as a win for the Nigerian student, parents, government and private sector who want to engage in education financing.
"I feel that with this Student Loan Act, we are going to see a massive increase in the enrollment rate across our tertiary institutions because people would now have an alternative source."
Amidst the high unemployment rate in the country, some Nigerians have expressed concerns about a provision in the Act that provides that loan repayment for beneficiaries commences two years after completion of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
Addressing a situation where beneficiaries do not get jobs two years after their NYSC to start repayment, Mr Metilelu said the Act places the burden of providing an enabling environment for the private sector to employ, on the government.
Mr Metilelu said it was exciting that the Act stated clearly the sources of funding for the scheme, which he said would be gotten from a percentage of tax contributions made from the Education Endowment Fund, Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigeria Immigration Service.
