Student loan borrowers in other nations Commits suicide - ASUU

 By: News Peddlers 

ASUU

Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has disclosed  that beneficiaries of student loan initiatives in other countries, were committing suicide due to their inability to pay back debts.

This was said on Channels Television's Sunday Politics by ASUU National President Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke.

He said, “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.

“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.”

Osodeke thus requested that President Bola Tinubu amend the recently approved Students Loans Act to include grants for poor students.

The Student Loan Law offers poor Nigerian students loans without interest. 

Two years after the beneficiary completes the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, the loan repayment period begins.

The policy, according to the ASUU President, cannot be sustained.

He said, “The idea of student loans came in 1972 and it was in a bank established. People who took loans never paid.

“In 1994, 1993, the military enacted Decree 50 also set up a Students’ Loan Board. The National Assembly domesticated it in 2004 and within a year, it went off. The money disappeared. We want to see how this one will be different,” he added.

The ASUU President added that the loan's requirements were impractical.

He claimed that more than 90% of students will not be able to qualify for the loan.

Osodeke said, “We, as a union also did research of countries all over the world, of people who have benefited from this loan, they were committing suicide.

“Recently, (President Joe) Biden is trying to pay back the bank loans of some who borrowed in the US,” he added.

The ASUU president asked President to take another look at the new law, calling for a probe of the activities of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).