The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has moved to quash a viral document circulating on social media that claimed the federal government had halted upkeep allowance payments to student loan beneficiaries for the 2025/2026 academic session, the second time in as many months that the agency has had to publicly debunk such a claim.
In a statement issued on Saturday and reported by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), NELFUND said the notice dated July 10 and bearing the name of its Director of Strategic Communications, Mrs. Oseyemi Oluwatuyi, was fabricated and did not originate from the Fund.
The purported document had claimed that funds meant for upkeep allowances for May, June, and subsequent months had not been released, describing the suspension as temporary and promising that disbursements would resume once outstanding allocations were received.
“The document being circulated is fake and did not emanate from NELFUND. Beneficiaries and the general public should disregard the misinformation and rely only on NELFUND’s official communication channels for authentic updates,” the Fund said, insisting that neither the federal government nor NELFUND had approved or announced any such suspension.
Saturday’s clarification is not an isolated incident. NELFUND issued a strikingly similar rebuttal in late May, when it dismissed as fake both a statement falsely attributed to the agency and an AI-generated front page purportedly from the Nigerian Tribune, both of which alleged that upkeep payments had been suspended.
That earlier statement, also signed by Oluwatuyi, went further in tone, describing the reports as “entirely FAKE, misleading, and designed to create panic, confusion, and distrust among beneficiaries and the general public.”
The recurrence of near-identical hoaxes now twice in roughly six weeks points to a persistent misinformation campaign targeting one of the federal government’s flagship social intervention programs, even as the agency insists it has released more than N206 billion in loans to support over 1.6 million students in tertiary institutions nationwide.
Yet the fake notices appear to be gaining traction precisely because they tap into a genuine grievance: many beneficiaries say their monthly upkeep stipends, which support day-to-day living costs and are only disbursed to students who specifically opt in for them alongside their tuition loans, have simply stopped arriving.
The complaints intensified after reports on NELFUND’s plans to replace direct school payments with a digital token system, prompting a wave of frustrated reactions from affected students and parents.
Favour Ojochenemi, one beneficiary, said the delay was jeopardizing participation in the mandatory Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES): “When will we, the students, start to receive upkeep allowance for May and June? A lot of Nigerian students need this money… Students are going for SIWES, and they need this money to be able to attend this compulsory scheme.”
Modupeola Adeola Idowu, a widow whose child is a beneficiary, said the missed payments had hit her household hard: “My child has not received the monthly upkeep since May. For the last two months, it has affected us badly.” She added that she now fears tuition disbursements could be affected as well.
Another beneficiary, Alex Bless, framed the matter squarely in terms of the scheme’s contractual nature, noting that the money is a loan that must eventually be repaid regardless of whether it was disbursed on schedule: “For the past three months we haven’t received our upkeep, and everyone knows this is a loan. So how are we going to pay for what we haven’t been given?” He called on NELFUND’s leadership to directly address the complaints.
For its part, NELFUND maintains that disbursements of both tuition loans and upkeep allowances are continuing uninterrupted in line with its mandate to provide financial support to eligible students in public tertiary institutions across the country and has pointed to the proliferation of fabricated statements and synthetic media as a growing threat to public trust in the scheme.
The agency has specifically flagged both a forged statement and an AI-generated newspaper front page as examples of the kind of deceptive content now circulating.
The Fund has repeatedly urged beneficiaries, stakeholders, and members of the public to disregard the false reports and rely strictly on verified information issued through its official communication channels, including its verified social media handles and official email contact.
Still, the recurring nature of these hoaxes and the fact that they appear to resonate with beneficiaries’ lived experience of delayed payments suggest that categorical denials alone may not be enough to fully restore confidence.
Whether the disconnect stems from processing delays, banking bottlenecks, or the transition toward the newly proposed digital token disbursement system remains unclear from NELFUND’s public statements.
Until beneficiaries actually see stipends land in their accounts, the credibility gap between the agency’s assurances and students’ bank balances looks likely to keep generating fertile ground for the next round of misinformation.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
NELFUND’s upkeep allowance payments have not been officially suspended; the viral notice claiming otherwise is fake. But the real story here isn’t the hoax itself; it’s the payment delays feeding it.
Beneficiaries genuinely haven’t received their May and June stipends, and until that gap between NELFUND’s assurances and students’ actual bank balances closes, denying fake notices will keep failing to fully calm public distrust.
Verify claims through NELFUND’s official channels, but don’t mistake “the notice was fake” for “the delays aren’t real.”
