Former Deputy Vice Chancellor of Osun State University, Prof Anthony Kola-Olusanya, in this interview with GRACE EDEMA, says the Student Loan Scheme should be extended to private school students as well. Excerpts:
last year, the Federal Government introduced the student loan and, over the months, there have been debates and even a recent review. What’s your take on the scheme generally? How impactful will it be on the Nigerian students?
First of all, in all genuineness, let me commend the Federal Government of Nigeria for having thought about the need to make access to higher education for everybody. That is the essence of the law that was made.
When the Student Loan Act was first announced, it came with different kinds of issues like the need for guarantors; you can’t get a student loan if your parents earn more than N500k per year, among others. These were the issues at that time, but it’s also nice to know that the government, after a lot of criticism of the Student Loans Act, withdrew it and redrafted the amendment. It shows one point on the side of improving government access. I can say that the government is committed.
Since many may not like loans, when you are taking a loan to finance education, you are expanding the space for those who may not have been able to afford the school fees. It means no student will have to drop out of a higher institution on the grounds of financial incapacity. That loan will sort that out.
The law has presently been redrafted and the need for guarantors is no longer there.
The salary ban is not there, which means everybody can access the loan and it is now defined. It’s not the loan to rent a house. It has to be for your programme, that is your tuition and other charges and I think I read something that involves a little bit of living stipend and if that is part of it, it is also good because, though you are helping someone to pay for the tuition and other charges, you don’t assume that the livelihood of that student is being taken care of. That living stipend arm of it then comes in, that’s when the loan is perfected and that is what is done in other climes.
The only snag here is that I would have loved the loan to be available to every Nigerian, whether you are in a private or public institution. I think that clarification needs to be made, whether you are in a public institution or a private institution, it’s a loan, not a grant, so everybody should be able to access it. The fact that a child is attending a school where they pay N3m for certain courses does not mean that the parents can afford it. The parent also is taking a loan, but the Federal Government loan would be cheaper in terms of interest than that of a commercial bank loan, which is why I would expect the government to open the loan up to all Nigerian students, not only for those in public schools, federal or state schools, but also private higher institutions, that’s my take on that
Don’t you think the Federal Government might feel that parents who take their wards to private institutions have the funds for it?
That argument cannot hold water. The Federal Government licenses private tertiary institutions, so the essence is the expansion of the higher educational space. That was the essence of licensing private higher institutions, not because the parents of students who are going to attend have the money. At the level of NUC, in the higher institution, there’s something we call carrying capacity. The number of students every year seeking admission into universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education is huge and only 10 per cent are consistently admitted nationally. That was the reason the Federal Government felt obliged to expand access to higher education. One of the reasons some parents take their wards to private institutions is not because they can afford it but because they want their child to study and graduate in four years. They don’t want broken sessions. So, those are the issues and again, these children in private schools are not going to work in private companies alone, they are also going to work for the Federal Government of Nigeria, whether they work for private or public organisations, the point is they are working to improve the economy of the country. So, they have the same rights that public institution students have.
It’s not a case of creating a dichotomy amongst them. Many university teachers, many secondary school teachers, many primary school teachers, and even ordinary citizens are sending their children to private schools. Some of these private schools can’t even pay the money once, they break down the payment of the fees, so if they break it down, it means the parents cannot afford it. We must understand the issue of access, which is what the government wants to resolve.
The essence of access is to create more spaces. We have created more spaces, so why are just a few numbers of students attending private institutions? It’s because affordability is not there. I preach strongly against the excuse that parents can afford it. No parent wants his child(ren) to go to schools where there are strikes or interruptions and that is the reason why many parents opt for private institutions.
What should matter to us is ‘Can these children pay back?’ Yes, students will pay back. That is how it’s done. There should be no discrimination between students of private institutions and public institutions, students are students.
What challenges do you think the students and the government might encounter, considering what is happening in other climes?
It is too early to begin to envisage problems that the students who take a loan will face. We will have to graduate some sets of students with the scheme first before we can begin to judge the capability to repay the loan.
When you start to think about the challenges, you unwittingly or unconsciously will be creating avenues for people to lie later on. I’ll go with the flow, and let the loan be available for students from the first year, not even the second year. When they graduate the first set, the loan act says two years after their NYSC, which is the moratorium period. If you have a job, you start to pay back, and if you don’t get a job, the government will give you maybe a certain number of years, because the government itself expects that you must get a job or you’ll get a job, so it becomes a matter of responsibility for citizens to pay the loan, having enjoyed the facility. When you say ‘Oh, they won’t be able to pay’, you would have created excuses unconsciously for those who will be benefiting from the loan and will be creating reasons for them to say they’ll not be able to pay. When it comes to that, you are also creating the means for the loan policy to go into extinction early. If the loan is given to a thousand students and they graduate and, hypothetically, 350 of them get jobs, then the 350 start to pay, that’s it.
There is a clause that it is until after a year of admission that a student can access the loan, will this arrangement favour the students?
The government should remove that clause and that of looking at the CGPA too before granting the loan. You don’t use CGPA to give loans. CGPA is used to give grants and grants are not refundable, they are not repayable, but loans are. The idea that a candidate will get a CGPA that will clear him or her to be eligible for a loan is not going to be possible, so it means that upon the offer of admission, your letter of admission, matriculation number and the letter from your school should be enough to apply as and give what the student is due, so from first year, you don’t even have to be checking CGPA because this is a loan. It doesn’t matter even if the student is in the third class. The point is that it is a loan and loans are repayable, that’s the principle. For me, the loan is about access to higher education, the same way you can’t restrict the opportunities for the loan from private institutions students because primarily, they are Nigerian students, they are Nigerians and have the rights and privileges that their citizenship carries for studying in an institution within the conference of Nigeria and that should be granted to them such as it is granted to public institutions students and same will apply to students who are about to start in the higher institution.
What are the supposed benefits/advantages of the Students Loan Act?
I’m an apostle of accessibility to higher education and everything that will encourage accessibility I will support. When you expand access for everybody, a very educated citizen will make a country grow and become bigger and it will also help higher institutions to achieve their goals since they won’t be dealing with students who are not paying.
The government will benefit more, that’s the ultimate and the economy will grow, and GDP will improve. It’s not abstract, it is real. When you have a conscious university graduate, the thinking will be different, and there will be a reduced level of despondency in the system and that can ultimately contribute to building patriotism, the feeling that the country is concerned about you, even though it’s a loan, but you are feeling the country is contributing to your life.
Do you have any advice or suggestions on areas you want the government to improve upon?
The state governments need to also set up a state student loan board since the Federal Government cannot give loans directly to students in the states.
Disbursement should be through the state where the institution is domiciled. We want to reduce as much as possible the over-concentration of power at the centre. The state needs to be involved and must also have a contribution to the loan. What the Federal Government intends to give may not be enough, the support of the state part will save the money to the point where it is affordable.
I feel strongly that only the tuition and other charges should be paid back on interest. The little stipend of the loan should be written off and the interest rate should be a single digit. It cannot be double-digit and the interest rate should not be more than at most six per cent. Anything more than six per cent will be exorbitant because the loan is not a profit-making venture. The six per cent will be like an administration fee and not more than that.