Recently, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, published a list of beneficiaries of the President Bola Tinubu government’s innovative credit advance to interested students of federal tertiary institutions.

Data released by the Fund indicated that about N2.9 billion had been disbursed to more than 27,000 students in 19 institutions. Curiously, none of the federal universities in the South-East zone was identified among the beneficiaries. This prompted an “X” platform user, Santiago Leo #Donaldsplendo, to query the Fund as to their reason for this perceived exclusion.

Some of the federal institutions in the South-East include University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN; Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umuahia, MOUAU; Federal University of Technology, Owerri, FUTO; Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, UNIZIK; among others.

In a swift response, NELFUND tweeted that geopolitical zones were not factors in the disbursement process. It added: “NELFUND sent a verification list to every institution eligible for disbursement. Payments are being made to institutions that have responded to this verification”. It further added that the delay in disbursement to these institutions was due to lack of response from them.

The South-East caucuses in the National Assembly, having verified that NELFUND was not the primary culprit for this apparent “exclusion”, bore down on the defaulting institutions to quickly complete their verification to enable their students to benefit.

What happened here is a classic case of public service failure. It is difficult to understand why only institutions in the South-East felt aloof to a major relief package by the Federal Government for indigent students, particularly at this moment of crushing economic challenges facing the average Nigerian family.

It is a sign of serious system failure that institutions from other parts of the country were proactively surging to grab this opportunity for their students while the South-East institutions just sat on their palms.

More curious is the fact that the students did not pressure their administrators to do their work, even after seeing that their mates from other parts were receiving the loans. Where are the students’ unions? What do they do these days apart from playing the stooge for politicians?

NELFUND still has a part of the blame. It is a betrayal of the president’s trust that the Fund’s officials would feel unconcerned by the negligence of the South-East varsities. They should have raised concerns in the appropriate quarters to prevent this public wrong perception of partiality.

We disagree that geopolitical zone is not a factor in the distribution of federal largesse such as students’ loans. Equity is a must.

We urge President Tinubu, through the Minister of Education, to query all the defaulting institutions for dereliction of duty. There must be consequences for service failure.