Big Data Analytics & Innovation Conference

NELFUND at One: But What’s the Real Cost of Educating a Nigerian University Undergraduate?

by James Ogunleye

So, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) is celebrating its first anniversary—with over 550,000 applications received and a whopping ₦56.85 billion disbursed. That’s no small feat, and on the surface, it sounds like a revolutionary shift in widening participation in, and access to higher education.

But here’s the thing: how much does it actually cost to educate an undergraduate in Nigeria yearly? That’s a question nobody in government has answered with any clarity—not before launching the loan scheme in May 2024, and not since.

Instead, what we got was a law—the Access to Higher Education Act—and then a loan system built on... what exactly? Individual universities setting their own tuition fees without any national cost framework. How is a federal loan scheme based on such scattered, inconsistent numbers?

Compare this to the UK. When the UK introduced its student loan system, the government negotiated a standardised tuition range across public universities: a floor of £6,000 and a ceiling of £9,000 per year. Simple. Transparent. Predictable.

In Nigeria, we’re dealing with a wide variety of fees that differ not because of academic quality or programme strength, but mostly due to internal revenue pressures in each university. So we have some universities charging ₦150,000, others over ₦500,000—and no one’s asking why.

Is it really fair to base student loans on university-by-university whims rather than on data-driven, evidence-based cost analysis? Where is the empirical data that says, “This is the average cost of delivering quality undergraduate education in Nigeria”?

President Tinubu's administration deserves credit for making education financing a national priority. NELFUND is certainly a bold intervention. But the core question remains unanswered: what are we paying for—and is it worth the price tag?

Until we have a transparent, standardised costing model, we’re essentially funding a system with no price tag integrity. And that’s not just a policy gap—it’s a problem for students, for universities, and for Nigeria’s future.

What Are Your Thoughts?
Should Nigeria introduce a national tuition benchmark? Should public university fees be standardised before loans are issued? Let’s discuss.



- Prof James Ogunleye chairs the Big Data Analytics & Innovation Conference, [email protected]

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