The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has again expressed concerns over the recently signed Students Loan Act.
The academic body alleged that many beneficiaries of similar schemes in other countries are committing suicide due to their inability to settle the debt.
It urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to adjust the newly signed Students Loan Act to grants for poor students.
ASUU’s national president, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, gave made the appeal on ChannelsTV’s Sunday Politics monitored by our reporter.
“This would have been better if we are giving it to those set of students who are very poor, it should be called a grant, not a loan,” the ASUU president said.
“It should be called a grant since it is coming from the Federation Account and not that (after) these people have accessed it and when they are graduating, they have heavy loads behind them and within two years, if they don’t pay, they go to jail,” he added.
The new act made provision for interest-free loans to Nigerian students. The loan repayment scheme begins two years after the beneficiary completes the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
However, the ASUU President noted that the policy was not sustainable as the idea came in 1972 and people who took the loan never paid back.
Osodeke also said the conditions for the loan were not practicable maintaining that more than 90 percent of students won’t meet the requirements to access the money.
He also pointed out that the union did research on Students Loans all over the world and most of its beneficiaries committed suicide.
“Recently, (President Joe) Biden is trying to pay back the bank loans of some who borrowed in the US,” he said.
While calling on the President to take another look at the policy, Osodeke asked him to probe the activities of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
