*L-R: Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyer and the Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ola Olukoyede.
The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen accountability, prevent financial infractions and ensure that funds meant for Nigerian students are directly received by the intended beneficiaries.
The agreement was signed on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at the EFCC headquarters in Abuja by the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyer, and the EFCC Executive Chairman, Ola Olukoyede.
Speaking at the ceremony, Olukoyede urged NELFUND to strengthen its systems to ensure that funds approved by the Federal Government for student loans and educational support were protected from diversion and other forms of financial crime.
He said the partnership would enable both institutions to identify vulnerabilities in the management and disbursement of funds and introduce preventive measures before financial infractions occurred.
According to him, the EFCC’s responsibility goes beyond recovering proceeds of crime to ensuring that recovered funds are put to productive use for the benefit of Nigerians.
He described NELFUND as one of the major legacy projects of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration and commended its management for expanding access to education financing.
Under the MoU, the EFCC and NELFUND will establish a joint Fraud Assessment and Control Unit to monitor compliance with established guidelines, assess risks and strengthen safeguards around the management of funds.
Olukoyede stressed the importance of prevention, saying the EFCC should not have to wait until funds were stolen before intervening.
“We don’t have to necessarily wait for money to be stolen before we go into action. Why can’t we provide more prevention?”
He said the EFCC would work with NELFUND to examine its processes and identify areas that could be exploited for fraud or diversion.
The EFCC chairman also linked the initiative to the need to address vulnerabilities among young Nigerians, noting that a substantial number of persons investigated for cybercrime are young people, including students.
He explained that the idea of using recovered proceeds of crime to support education was partly driven by the need to provide legitimate opportunities for young people.
Olukoyede advised NELFUND to explore mechanisms that would facilitate direct disbursement of funds to verified beneficiaries, with tertiary institutions playing a role in authenticating students.
“Let it go directly to the human beings,” he said, stressing the need to ensure that recovered funds and other resources allocated for educational support ultimately reach the people for whom they are intended.
He also urged NELFUND to access only funds legitimately due to it and ensure their prompt application for the purposes for which they were provided.
The EFCC chairman expressed confidence that the partnership would improve risk assessment, accountability and internal controls while establishing safeguards capable of surviving changes in the leadership of both institutions.
*NELFUND Processes 1.6m Applications*
Earlier, Sawyer commended the EFCC for its support and its emphasis on preventing economic crimes rather than waiting for them to occur.
He disclosed that NELFUND had processed 1.6 million applications, with 960,000 loans approved, while recently upgrading its systems and launching a new portal.
According to him, NELFUND’s application, approval and disbursement processes are conducted electronically, with funds transferred through formal banking channels rather than cash transactions.
Sawyer said student payments were made directly into beneficiaries’ bank accounts, with identifiers such as the National Identification Number (NIN), Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registration details, matriculation numbers and Bank Verification Number (BVN) used for verification.
He said the Fund had deliberately designed its processes to ensure that every transaction leaves an electronic trail.
“We wanted to make sure that there are no gateways, no middlemen in between,” Sawyer said, adding that applicants should not require personal connections within NELFUND to access the scheme.
He said the system was intended to eliminate unnecessary intermediaries and reduce opportunities for manipulation, while ensuring that the bulk of the funds goes directly to educational institutions and verified beneficiaries.
Sawyer also pledged that NELFUND’s systems would remain transparent and functional beyond the tenure of its current officials.
“It’s not personal. We need to ensure that this country can run and run and run without it being all because it’s this person or that person,” he said.
He commended the EFCC for recovering funds being deployed to support NELFUND’s mandate, noting the risks undertaken by Commission personnel in the course of recovering proceeds of crime.
Sawyer said the MoU represented another step towards ensuring that recovered funds were not diverted after recovery but were ultimately deployed to support Nigerian students.
The collaboration, he added, is expected to strengthen preventive controls, enhance transparency and improve accountability in the management and disbursement of funds dedicated to education financing.