The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has collaborated with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to establish the procedures for distributing student loans.
In June, President Bola Tinubu signed the student loan bill into law, aiming to provide financial support to Nigerian tertiary education students.
The legislation establishes an education loan fund, funded 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.
CBN collaborates with JAMB
The CBN will oversee the fund, working with deposit money banks nationwide.
As outlined in JAMB’s bulletin, the CBN and JAMB are currently collaborating to create the distribution methods for beneficiaries of the program.
In a meeting held on September 12 at JAMB’s headquarters in Abuja, the CBN mentioned that JAMB will furnish the necessary database of eligible students enrolled in Nigerian higher education institutions as part of the verification process for loan access.
Oyeleke Abayomi, Deputy Director at the CBN, revealed that the student loan program would be implemented in phases beginning October 1.
He explained that interested Nigerian students would be required to register for the loan, after which the CBN would verify their citizenship and admission status.
During the meeting, various topics were discussed, including acceptable verification methods, the central admissions processing system (CAPS) for applicant status verification, the use of the UTME registration number as a unique identifier, and the role of the national identification number (NIN).
Both parties reached an agreement that the CBN would provide the data format while JAMB would supply the necessary data for program implementation.
They also agreed to establish a joint technical team to initiate the process and emphasized that every eligible student for the student loan program should possess a UTME/DE registration number.
