With less than 50 days to the much-anticipated 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria, educational and financial experts in the country have come out to knock the All Progressives Congress (APC) flag bearer, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu over his persistent promise to issue loans to University students if elected into the office on the ballots.
Recall that while speaking at several campaign platforms within the past few months, Tinubu has repeatedly pointed to the issuance of student loans by his government as one of the major ways Nigeria can overcome her lingering educational crises, adding that University Graduates will be expected to begin repaying the loans once they get employed.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE TV recently, the current serving President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke faulted the APC candidate for making such a promise, arguing that first-world countries like the US have found it quite difficult to sustain the student loan system.
“The student loan system in Nigeria is not a viable, and implementable plan. It is like putting the children in bondage. A country as rich as America introduced this bank loan and somewhere along the line because those students who passed through the program are suffering in repayment, the current president who is a Democrat, decided to write off most of these loans, and he is still doing so because it is having an adverse effect on the citizens. So, even in a country like America where it is difficult to get jobs when you are through and if you don’t have a job the country has to assist you, is it now in Nigeria where there are 133 million living below the poverty line that people will now take loans to pay for education? A nation where unemployment is as high as 30 percent, is that where people will pay student loans?”
On his part, renowned financial analyst and CEO of Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismark Rewane, described Tinubu’s plan as unsustainable in a struggling Nigerian economy.
“The first thing a lender worries about is the source of the payment of the loan because you are lending students money to fund their education without knowing whether they will get a job. Therefore, I don’t think lending money to students works anywhere. In the US it is still a problem because there is no point in lending and then giving debt forgiveness. I believe that a much more viable option will be to give grants, scholarships, and bursaries. Education is a right. Free, compulsory, and quantity education is a right for everybody. Therefore, I believe that the monies that will be saved from subsidy payments should be deployed almost totally to funding education.”
You can watch the rest of the interviews on ARISE TV below:
SOURCE: YouTube.
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