By Adesina Wahab 

The federal government has been urged not to fail into the trap of extending the activities of the NELFUND to private higher institutions, as the Fund is yet to fully service students in public institutions it is meant to serve.

The Executive Secretary of Africa Brands Review, ABR, Mr Joseph Ayodele, stated this in a message he shared with Vanguard Newspapers.

He urged the FG to resist the expansion of tuition subsidies and loan schemes into privately-owned educational institutions.

“While NELFUND has served as a vital “safety valve” for students in public tertiary institutions following the removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the Naira, extending this financial bridge to private 

entities risks recreating the same opaque, corruption-prone regimes that crippled Nigeria’s oil and forex sectors.

Ayodele recalled what he termed the “Ghost capacity” when subsiding private flour mills eventually led to nothing being achieved. 

“History serves as a stern warning against subsidizing private infrastructure. In the early 2000s, a proposal emerged to subsidize the price of bread based on the installed capacity of milling companies. Data at the time showed a dangerous disconnect between “capacity” and “efficiency”: Had the government proceeded with that subsidy, it would have rewarded the inefficient giant while 

penalizing the productive operator. Today, many private schools sit on large compounds with stagnant enrollment; a government “per-head” subsidy would create an incentive for these schools to misrepresent data to capture state funds.”

On the step by the FG to send some out-of-school children to private schools for tutoring, Ayodele described it as an abdication of state duty.

“The government’s constitutional responsibility is to provide free, high-quality Universal Basic Education (UBE) through its own institutions. The state must not become an accessory to promoting private profit under the guise of social welfare,” he opined.

He noted that private institutions should thrive on Quality and Student-Centered Excellence. 

Instead of subsidizing private tuition, he suggested that the government must double down on proven public-sector interventions. “Public School Feeding: A critical tool for driving enrollment, student concentration, and improved attendance; direct investment in government-owned classrooms and teacher training. There is an urgent need for quality staffing and the elimination of PTA Alumni, or Community-paid teachers from government-owned schools. The state must fully own  its payroll.

“Keeping the loan scheme exclusive to public institutions to ensure the most vulnerable Nigerians are not priced out of education.

Nigeria must choose efficiency and transparency over opaque subsidies. The path to educational recovery lies in a robust, well-funded public system, not the bankrolling of private enterprises.”