TheCable

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has partnered with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to work out modalities for the disbursement of student loans.

In June, President Bola Tinubu signed the student loan bill into law to provide financial assistance to Nigerian students in tertiary institutions.

The law creates an education loan fund to be serviced by 1 percent of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) revenue, 1 percent of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) revenue, 1 percent of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) revenue, and 1 percent of oil profits.

The fund is to be managed by the CBN through deposit money banks across the country.

According to JAMB’s bulletin shared on Monday, the CBN and the board are now interfacing in fashioning out disbursement modalities for beneficiaries of the scheme.

CBN, in a meeting with JAMB at the board’s headquarters in Abuja on September 12, said the examination body will provide the requisite database of eligible students enrolled in Nigerian tertiary institutions as part of the verification process for accessing the loans.

Oyeleke Abayomi, deputy director at the CBN, said the student loan scheme will begin in phases from October 1.

He said every interested Nigerian student is to log in and register for the loan while CBN verifies the citizenship and admission status of the applicants.

During the meeting, both parties discussed a wide range of issues bordering on acceptable means of verification.

They also addressed the central admissions processing system (CAPS) for applicant status verification, the usage of the UTME registration number as a unique identifier, and the role of the national identification number (NIN).

The bodies resolved that CBN would provide the data format while JAMB would present the needed data to implement the scheme.

They also resolved to immediately set up a joint technical team to kick-start the process.

The bodies added that every eligible candidate for the student loan should possess a UTME/DE registration number.