Clergyman Faults FG’s Plan to Reintroduce Students Loan Scheme

Laleye Dipo in Minna

A Nigerian clergyman based in the United States of America, Mr. Chuzzy Udenwa, has faulted the plan by the federal government to reintroduce students’ loan scheme in the country, saying the policy would create more problems than what it is designed to solve.

Udenwa, who is the General Overseer of Glory Home City Church, Atlanta Georgia, said that the federal government should first address the huge number of unemployed people in the country before introducing any loan scheme.

Exchanging views with newsmen after a three-day crusade the church organised for some students in Minna, Niger State, at the weekend, Udenwa queried where the students that would benefit from the loan would get the resources to pay back the loan after graduation.

He said: “Such students will be struggling to pay debt right from the beginning of their lives” or their guarantors would be running away from debt collectors because of their inability to the obligation.

What is needed, according to him, is for the federal government to encourage public spirited individuals, philanthropists and corporate and religious organisations to take up the funding of the education of students as is being done globally saying this approach will be more sustainable.

The federal government has for logistic reasons suspended the takeoff of the loan scheme.

Udenwa also said that it was time government to divests itself from the establishment of tertiary institutions and leave the exercise to the private sector and religious institution for the stability of the education sector pointing out that government should be only concerned with the creation of the environment and enactment of laws that will make the organisations function effectively.

The educational institutions, he said,  should stop looking up to government as a source of funding but  look forward to big corporations, wealthy individuals, big businesses to establish foundations and grants with direct funding without government interference.

“What government should do is to establish the frame works for the companies and individuals to operate, education is a joint effort between government and society whereby the  Academic Staff Union of  Universities,(ASUU) will not even remember that there is a government not to talk of going  on strike,” he declared

At the end of the crusade no fewer than 300 students were given direct and indirect scholarship, some getting as much as N50,000