 Alright thanks for staying with us now. A student loan is a type of loan designed to help students pay for post-secondary education and the associated fees such as tuition, books and supplies and living expenses. Now it may differ from other types of loan in the fact that the interest rate may be substantially lower than the repayment shadow and the repayment shadow may be deferred while the student is still in school. Now with a student loan bill that was recently passed into law today we're asking what the future is of the Nigerian educational system, what would it look like? Now please let's hear what you have to say remember you can join the conversation send us an SMS or WhatsApp to 080384663. Alright so ladies I just want to hear your quick thoughts then I will bring in Uti. What do you think how do you think this student act now the student bill or student loan act how would it play out when it comes to our structures in terms of education? The only fear me I have right I think I had read it out on Monday the criteria something around the minimum amount that should be in the family account should be about 500,000 then also you have to bring two guarantors and again from the list of the guarantors you have to have a civil servant that has a level 12 somebody in the judiciary system somebody you know that's practiced law for over 10 years I'm wondering how do we meet up with those kinds of you know criteria and today I just recently heard again about if you've had any issues around drugs or you've been indicted and all of that you will not be eligible to access that loan so I mean so for me I just feel like I don't know those conditions how would it play out because really the people that truly need to access loans right how would how would they be able to afford that especially the minimum family income you know so I'm not sure when it's 500 I think they say 500,000 and below that's the eligibility oh is it below or above below 500 oh really for you're earning oh okay that means I must have gotten it all 500,000 that's that per annum that's so your income should be below 500,000 per annum not above no okay go ahead below that means my bad yeah so there's that and then I understand where you're coming from saying you don't know how it will affect because these are people first of all 500,000 is even on the family level because if it is a student loan I don't know how you have 500,000 in your account so I think this is from the family point of view in terms of your parents and no that's how that is actually a family family so it's less than you and your parents and less than 500,000 and you require a loan fine but you've been able to then again they have put all these measures in place so somehow I think the onus is on maybe your parents to help out to get like some of this you know the guarantors and making sure that your eligibility is in place like you have everything that would um allow you to be able to get the student loan and I know that they said um I think repayment is after two years so two years after NYU after completion of school after NYU so they're expecting that within the by then you should have gotten a job but also they have to consider the fact that the Nigerian the way the Nigerians assist them is the job market is not very easy so how what would happen and I also know that they have also brought out you know what would happen you know consequences of not being able to repay the loan you know jail deeds that so I'm wondering how how is it going to go it's really surprising because for me growing up I never knew anything about student loan I schooled in Nigeria and I never knew anything about student loan but I hear that our parents had student well between their time and our time it's kind of got scrapped yeah so it's new for our generation so there's a lot of getting used to and a lot of awareness that needs to be made yeah I don't think it is more of I need to understand what it will look like but let me come to you quickly because I need to bring in Otie so I share the same sentiment right um I think the part that cuts me was the part about the guarantors right and knowing that level of people who would need to sign as guarantors and I'm like okay for a family who is supposed to earn um 500 000 and below per annum if you divide 500 by 12 I mean earning that amount monthly is very small so I'm just like okay how would you need to know who do you need to call how would you get to that level who would you call to sign um as a guarantor for you and I feel like a lot of people will be very skeptical to want to sign knowing that okay you don't really have money like that so yeah okay so let me bring in Utie Aloo with experience in various disciplines including customer experience customer service customer loyalty digital marketing strategy content development and training both in public and private sector across two continents Utie Aloo has been exposed to exposed to and benefited from student loan system in the UK quality education various business style strategies and approaches and as you already know she is a proud member of WIS you know sometimes when we see this kind of topic and we know that we have our own we don't bother anybody because we have our experts inside the building with us but thank you so much Utie for agreeing to be with us tonight because I really didn't want us to have this conversation from just head knowledge I wanted it to be an experiential conversation so that perhaps our president allowing us to breathe and listening he can understand how the system works right and how it impacts somebody that have been used to it because I perhaps very scary stories Utie people that are living abroad education is not cheap some people spend their lifetime some people spend 40 years 20 years paying back student loan is not particularly a a good point for some people is a very sore point for them so I mean with what we understand Nigerian system to look like if you want to ask assess what's it called what the future of education would look like with student loan structure in place what do you see well it's a great start to the reforms that we need in the tertiary education sector we have a lot of challenges in that space and what I was most happy to see was that this is going to have a ripple effect because there are a lot of things that this opens a lot of doors but when you open doors what tends to happen if it's windy it blows away dust and it reveals a lot of things so what I see for me with this is first excitement because really what it offers is opportunity for a lot of people who may not have thought that it was possible for them to access tertiary education so first of all it opens those doors it gives access right but it does now this is almost like when you say the first step is the hardest right there are now so many other steps that have to be taken for you to get from point A to point B so this is the beginning of the journey but what does success look like which is the question we're asking today how is it going to impact the education sector so once you've given you've taken away one of the key barriers which is is funding right now I hear you know the comments that I've heard even you know as you ladies were speaking around the challenges with the application the application is actually not that cumbersome the truth is if you are getting a job today in Nigeria a graduate job you provide guarantors you would have to and there are stipulations around who you can provide as a guarantor maybe not as small a list as this but again you would have to provide guarantor so even drivers even not everybody if you are a nanny whatever you provide guarantor well so again let's remember that these you're aspiring to a better life so one Nigerians we make it we where there's a will there's a way so we will find people right for me the the guarantors are not the problem someone said this to me this morning the first thing I said to the person is let's remember first and foremost that university is not for everybody one of the key things that stood out for me in in the act when I read it it's actually a very short act I encourage everybody to go and read it when I read it was the fact that it wasn't just universities so it it comes all the way down to vocational colleges which is great so colleges of education vocational schools you know do we see this in federal and state universities right it covers the entire gamut so the fact is now it doesn't matter what level you want to study at you now have access to funding nobody's saying it's only doctor lawyer if you look historically at where um funding programs like this have started I'll use the american one as an example why did student loans what was the genesis of student loans in america it was the race for space so when the russians were beating america in getting to space the whole spotnik and all of that they asked why are we not why are we not competitive and they said well your education system you don't have enough people so they started off with um technology sort of based sciences math and all of that um those are the first people who had had access to loans in america and then they then broadened it they changed the act and then it became sort of a higher education fund and they've gone through various um circles various uh rewrites of their acts their policies they've gone through in fact i think america has tested it the most both from federal loans to private loans to a mix they've done everything and i mean we all know the horror stories in america the kind of interest rates that are charged of course there they have universities that are for profit and not for profit so by mistake you you you know you end up in a for-profit school well you're in trouble because you are now ending up with lots of debt so it essentially is a good entry point right it's it's the beginning of the journey that we're on and i'm sure as we go through the conversation we'll talk about what that journey is going to unfold and the areas it needs to impact because one of the key things for me that i said with this was you are going to bring in or rather let's take for example that this program is hugely successful as we hope it will be and you pull out a million graduates then you don't have a million jobs that's how loans start to default it's so interesting so when you talked about um expanding it to colleges of education and all of those things right do you see this like improving the quality of the education that we begin to get from some of these schools right things i am paying you know okay they say there's availability of loans and all of that and i'm paying for it why can't i get a standard quality education right if you see this improving impacting on the not just the fact that okay people will now go to school but the quality of what comes out in terms of the the graduates what we're turning out do you see this improving it in any way yeah so again there are other reforms that we expect to see first of all let's be clear when we go abroad Nigerians are happy to pay more for education but in Nigeria we like to pay peanuts right um and we expect it to be subsidized by the government we we've largely had that culture for a long time good things cost money right equipment education good lecturers good professors who are world-renowned these things all cost money when you look at CVs of md ceo you see harvard you see ncer you see as you see all these schools right all these schools they're not cheap if you just do one week two week three week program you are spending a few million naira just for the tuition not for full degree just a few weeks you know they just tell you this person has attended bum bum bum bum they're spending a lot of money so the reality is what we are paying today needs to increase the university will need to so now that you are being given a loan i expect one of the things i expect and the reforms i expect to see in that sector would change the way universities are charging and the way they're being won because they have to improve because now today what do we say about graduates they're not employable right now if i'm going to take a loan that i have to pay back then we must make sure that i'm employable so it also means that the government now needs to hold the education sector accountable now in the act as well it talks about providing reports about the performance of the students and that is part of the accountability because if you're not educating this guy well enough if he's not passing you cannot i can already see the default ahead that this person is not going to be able to pay my loan if you have students dropping out one thing the act doesn't account for is dropouts it talks about two years after nyc but if you don't graduate you can't go to nyc so what happens if you don't make it pass year two and you drop out there should be a clause for that so the fact i mean it's an act policies and and things once the the committee set up which is supposed to then run the fund i'm sure all of those things can be worked out those are finer details the act doesn't need to be that detailed but the fact is you need to make sure that everything that's that's the basics with loans because the money you're repaying as a as a as a someone who has taken this loan goes back into the fund which means more people can access the fund there was a there was a nice line in the act that says from i think application to disbursement is 30 days uh subject to availability of the fund must be funded so we have to make sure for this to be successful there must be reforms in the education sector the quality of information of education must improve the quality of the graduates must be improved that then leads to higher employability but then that also means that other parts of the economy must improve because there must now be jobs for them to go into when we're even looking at the the schools and things that so the remember i talked about the colleges of education and vocational studies you now need to look at you're creating a better standard of teachers people who are now going to you know what i love about it it's a ripple effect the minutes we get better teachers who are going into our primary schools and nursery schools you start to get a better quality of people going into the tertiary situation level because right now we're missing for a lot of people the skills that children learn as children when we talk today about Gen Z and we laugh a lot of the challenges we have there is an accent of critical reason these are things children pick up as children the ability to unwind your imagination because you've been taught the art of storytelling of creative thinking all of those things are missing right now so you can see that the quality of the teacher there is no quality of education do not thank you so when you look at all the other curriculum these curriculums are developing as they go on the Nigerian curriculum is still one plus you do you know what i mean so you when you're talking about how it's going to impact the system you can start to see that beyond even just money and the graduate you can see the ripple effect then you talk about on the vocational side today when we all talk about artisans we pull out our hair but the truth is imagine if we had well-run vocational in fact i want us to come back to that because there's something you talked you touched on when you were talking about america that i want us to revisit but let's go on a very short break when we come back from that break we'll continue the conversation all right thanks for staying with us now if you're just tuned in uh we're discussing the future of Nigeria um of course Nigerian education and we have our very own with us remember you can join the conversation then there's an sms or what that was where it one eight zero three four six six three so i want to come to the ladies do we have because there's something i just want to quickly follow up on what uti said linking it up to the vocational school you remember you said that america saw that there was a gap they wanted to go to space and all of that and they said why we're not going to space what what's happening nigeria currently we have gaps and i believe that um the schools that we truly need to really empower are the technical schools and vocational schools because those gaps right if we are able to quickly um you know bridge that gap some of the challenges that we have right now are not meant for university graduate they are meant for people that are coming out of technical schools and all of that right so do you think that i mean like speaking to to the people that are in charge of this would it be a fair idea to say you know what let's narrow this funding now because i remember there was something that professor yemi oshiba had talked about when he was trying to fund was it fund now or something they were supposed to do something around the educational and they were focused on specifics right i can't remember it now top of my head so do you think that it would be nice now for us as a way of incent incentivizing some of the gaps that we already have this channel this funding first of all at this first phase to things that we believe that okay for instance we have issues with infrastructure we have issues with rather probably road networking and all the so all those kind of costs courses that you would study that will bring immediate the solutions and immediate change to our current challenges would that be a wise thing for the government to consider well so if we take what has happened you know remember i said that university is not supposed to be for everybody um generally the government creates policies and creates you know bills and things like this to stimulate the nation the economy things that keep the wheels turning increasing the the gdg all of those things so sometimes we want the government to be altruistic charitable we think that they're just doing it for the good of the people what they're doing it for is the good of the nation right and the people are a part of that so typically i'll use the uk as an as an example at one point everybody was going to university nobody was going to vocational college so there was a shortage of plumbers there was a shortage of electrician there was a shortage of work like literally artisans what we call artisans so what they did was they had to make the vocational sector more attracted by incentivizing and in fact you could sort of see at that point in time that the call out fee for a plumber was huge so people are now looking like i want to become a plumber right so the fact is i mean when i worked for the australian government we used to get tons of young people from ireland all in vocational speed going to australia why because they had shortages they're building houses shortages of shortages of electricians if you're standing on the road with billboards going have jobs will hire right so imagine given the capital human capital that we have in this country if we were training our artisan to that level that they could go abroad because their certifications they have to have to be able to be eligible for this kind of program then effects is flowing into the country we're expanding the diaspora so it has that kind of ripple effect where yes do we need to focus on those people yes do we need to streamline it no i don't believe so because right now we have a huge funding problem so everybody will benefit from this right but we do need to look at those places for me why i say it's more important is because we have a larger informal sector than formal sector so our graduates and the job they're going into is a smaller number now if you were pumping out more teachers more carpenters these are people who would most likely be entrepreneurs and will be paying back their 10 percent because we're building houses they're constantly working mechanics they're the cars they're getting jobs they have more opportunity to hit the ground running quickly than the graduates who are trying to get maybe into financial services or telco with a more limited spec you know so that for me is where i say this i mean every other street has a school we need teachers we need quality teachers so that we can start that chain off the right way so i think yes we need to look at it but we're just starting let's even kick off let's see how this is going to governize the entire education sector but we need to start okay ladies so for me um i love uti she has said a lot on this but for me i come from i have more questions than yeah that's why yeah i know i have more questions so for me i i you know i saw it in the in the news that how they plan on actually where these funds will come from and you know they mentioned um nigerian one one percent from certain um agencies which would include uh customs nigerian immigration firs and i also understand that in the bead probably that's the reason why the firs has been you know on a lot of businesses and just trying to get their money out because one percent of that is supposed to go which should amount the combination should be to amount to a start off about 200 billion but would that work is that sustainable it is sustainable i mean first and foremost we all need to get into the habit of paying taxes so i pay my taxes so so um i mean we need to also collect taxes in a manner where it also doesn't hamper the SME sector the smaller micro you know enterprises because sometimes it's a bit the tactics there are a bit you know yes draconian but we need to get into the habit of paying taxes so we're expecting one percent from taxes tax levies and and that we're expecting one percent from the proceeds of petroleum product um but the part i actually want to touch on um and this is where i think that people also need to get into the habit of giving back so there's endowments there is contributions so again imagine if you've benefited so today a lot of people had cheap education all the people that are jackpot and that went to ui that went to us that went to all these places cheap education it's time to pay it back it's time to actually give back right how do they put that structure in place because most of the ivy league schools right they are alumni they is an alumni structure that actually all this one i say you have full scholarship to this to that it is somebody that is funding it they're paying back so how do they put that structure so again remember i said that this is early day right and everybody so far has talked about the one percent one percent because again we still have that mindset that is from the government is from central money but you can actually do something we we all have to collectively come together to fix our problem it can't always be from the center right so yes a lot i mean that committee when it's set up i mean i like the spread of people that are in the committee so minister of finance minister of education even representations of astute vice chancellor so we have a lot of stakeholders who you know we have conversations like this in terms of how it's actually going to look on a day to day but i like that you talked about scholarships because there are many ways in which to fund education right today when people go abroad you see people saying oh i have a scholarship for a phd in this because why somebody's given that scholarship to drive research in that direction so if you remember in the past one we've talked about astute strike and we've talked about how universities should start to raise money and become a lot more creative a lot more creative reason so again these are the places we're looking at these are some of the reforms that we that have to come for this to be successful because our universities have to change it can't be in this current dispensation putting out the type of graduates we're putting out now that we expect that we will then change the system because i mean the thing is given that you are so imagine your one percent has gone into the fund right and we need to monitor this we need to see the numbers so in the uk they went from a bursary structure um had mr bursary god it was like by one year so i was going to go into university in september they ended the bursary people that went into university the year before me so i was the first set to take on the new student loan student loan structure and it was it was they they increased school fees also at the same time um these loans help people to come into university help the universities to get tuition it keeps the system running it's like you know a lead generation type of thing there so we got the loans now these loans by the way that this act speaks to is only tuition support so it doesn't have any maintenance fee the the uk program looks at tuition and which it pays straight to the university and then you can also you apply for like um for living support living support yeah and all of that and it pays that as well um and that one is paid to you i think i remember correctly was on an annual basis school was a long time ago um on an annual basis but essentially right you came out of university so here we've defined our moratorium as two years post nyc so technically it's about three years because if you graduate it takes you like maybe six months to start nyc one year to do nyc so maybe let's say at least minimum three years but more like three and a half or so so you have this moratorium right um they haven't set and this is what i think is missing a minimum standard of what you should be earning so what they just said is 10 right whether you are a salary earner or you're a business entrepreneur 10 percent now let's look at entry salaries right i mean the entry salary is barely enough to live up now you want to then take 10 percent 10 percent doesn't sound like a lot but when you earn 80k or 100k or even 150k somebody removing 10 percent you're gonna feel it because the money itself is already not enough so perhaps what was done in the uk was they set a threshold right so you you graduate you start earning this amount when you start earning this amount then they only take a percentage of what you earn above that amount so it makes it a little bit easier for you so you kind of have worked and you're earning quite a bit before you start to feel it because if you're earning only maybe a thousand pounds over whatever it is you're then they're only taking i think about nine percent of that so it's it's not choking right because remember that this is targeted at low income families they are also the most marginalized so when you tell somebody that can afford you to take a loan you know people use loans to make money they use loans to do business they don't have a problem with it because you know but when you tell a small person to take a micro loan it's like you're almost you know so these are the most marginalized of people so you kind of almost have to sell it to them to say this thing is going to be better for your future so some of these thought processes around that because it will help to sell it it will help to get it to the people who need it because for me to like you said go and find the guarantors the justice of the peace the lawyers and all of that i need to believe that i'm going to come out on the other end of it trust me if i go and find all those people by the time i beg the 50-50 key every month my scope is complete you know that brings me that brings me to my question right we've talked about the positives which is really amazing and i love the fact that this is giving a platform and an opportunity for people who cannot typically pay for school fees to be able to go to school but um i know that there are always risk to things like that there are always challenges so um what are the foreseeable um challenges that the government faced with this loan in place and how can they mitigate it so foreseeable challenges again um i like to use the american system when something starts to pinch you you start to shout when something like this is not properly run which can sometimes be a risk we know we're in nigeria right um the voices can get loud because one percent might not seem a lot but when you are working as living and your one percent is going into a pot that is then being mismanaged we start to complain right when we see that the people who should benefit from this are not benefiting from it we start to complain one of the most likely things today in nigeria we know that we have a corruption problem now i'm going to be trying to get a loan um if this process is not fully automated you have to sign you have to sign you have to sign and i have to bribe my way you don't you've killed it right so the things that we know that are particular and unique to us as nigerians and our culture it needs to be addressed so it says now that the application comes through the classes bank again i have a problem with that because even banks there's enough problems there already this is a system that can be fully automated because one you my my process of getting an account getting my admission all of those things jam has been sort of digitized all of those things have been digitized so it is a process that can be automated that can be done even in collecting these various details right it can be automated it doesn't need to go through the thought of going through the banks is like okay because i'm going to pay money but you're not paying money to me you're paying money to the institution directly so cbn to the fund fund through the deposit money banks to the schools i don't actually think you need the deposit money banks in that process at all um the funding itself could have its own funds warehouse somewhere and the fund could move money directly to the institutions you just need to get financial experts that understand the system to run the organization to automate that process so that i can go in and i can do it fully digitally so that takes away the need to see because they've said 14 days 30 days in terms of feedback and and displacement and all of that for you to achieve that technology must be involved for you to curb any shall practices technology must be involved so i'm hoping that when this committee is set up because the act gives them space to you know make whatever partnerships do whatever they need to do to run it so i'm hoping that they will leverage technology to deal with some of these risks again the reason why i say so this is where ghost students will start to turn up and the minute we start to have ghost students that means that we're increasing default loans in the future and we're making the pot smaller which means that in the long run because i understand that there was a student loan board that again due to defaults and and issues like this it was scrapped sometime in 1984 so the reason why we did not benefit from it was because of these problems so again risk wise if those learnings are not taken if the shall practices are not dealt with we will end up with monies because the money goes to the university if the university has autonomy to spend the money let the money come to me and we will all share the money it's possible so there are those leakages and gaps that we need to plug the quality of ge education like we said it's a huge risk so we've talked many times about how we manage performance if the corporate sector can manage performance well the government needs to learn to manage performance because we now need to hold the lecturers accountable if your students are feeling what is the problem i really love that i love that because again now i'm just thinking in my head how it would work right there's already a an automated system for even from their point of way all the way to the point of their jam and all of that you already see it so admissions would then be tied do you get so these things is even a function of you even as the this is sending as you are sending the admission letter and all of that you can also send that this is the opportunity for you to also access in case you would you be needing let's say we bought another way for you and they go ask you would you be needing some some loans to you know if you do do click this click that i think that automate automate automation of the system would change the face of education again this now means that a lot of these schools must be fully you know automated in terms of their digital processes of results and all of those things so all those moments they say pasting and a lot of everything they are males coming in and all of that well i mean in trying to wrap up this conversation and tie it nicely right we all say that i think recently i mean i just heard a breaking news that the ecc bus have been suspended you know so there's there's a lot that is going on all at the same time in nigeria right and it seems to me like um because again we we've i think we've said this thing several times that the the key um sectors that have really suffered the most right and if they were running well some of the problems that we are facing will not have it education is one of them healthcare is another one and of course transportation infrastructure you know and all of that agriculture you know if so and the direction power power sector if you see the direction of where the president is going he's touched on power he's touched on education he's touching on on on the finance the economy right with the cbn now with the money policy about you know the dollar market market process again determining and all of that there's a lot happening yeah right but how do we get these loans to really really be the the interest to be a bit variable some economies we want to breathe some economies uti two percent are on their loans actually for like people that want to do businesses like if you want to start off a business two percent yeah you know since we know that this sector is really critical to the transformation that we seek in the country how do we get how do we bring that that interest rate well i mean first of all for the education sector we're talking about these loans are interest free so that is great another reason again why we must keep the defaults low because there is no additional money the money that went out is what is coming back and that money is not only servicing the loans it's going to service the employees of the funds whatever is being spent all of that is coming out of that bucket so really tightening and making sure that that money one mirror one couple in fact doesn't go missing is very very important um the concept of interest for loans there are many factors that go into what the interest rate is monetary policy and but this one we've seen that's one percent of all of us who really work the one tax yeah but this one is not going to be interest free there's no interest you are sure yeah they are interest free okay because no uh me and Julia before they wake up say managing the money your banks will not tell us that uh they have to ask them just like Uzi said we'll have to wait to find out because it's tight in the name so eventually we'll find out they'll make adjustments i think that's why i actually went through the act i kept reading and reading i was looking for that interest i kept looking okay that's good so we have a comment here from Osage in Benin he says madame uti is our lecturer today yes so yes so allowing us to breathe she's allowing us to breathe our educational system is not rooted in our social cultural experiences it is very foreign and alienating to us other nations like us build their educational system within the context of their culture they learn from their culture they study from the known to the unknown while our educational system is very imaginative we imagine a lot of things our educational system is very theoretical without practical relevance until our educational system is made more practical in its approach it cannot contribute much to the development of the nation in us in us for example students can walk while they study the students can walk while they study but here we they gather us in one place in the name of school without the hope of giving giving work after school we must create the educational the education that encourages students to work while they study this is from santus and so santus makes sense but we actually don't so that is not really the fault of the education system we don't have an employment culture for part-time work what we have here is graduate you must be a graduate so there are reforms there are reforms that are needed there but he does make a point um so we will bring you back for employment reform but thank you so much we had so much for thank you ladies now before we go and show you follow us across all social media handles that we show africa you can interact with us further to your comments and more importantly follow all our engagements on social media likes and invite your families and friends to watch and follow now if you missed our quote for today that certainty isn't always a bad thing a mortgage can help you afford a home student loan can be a necessity in getting a good job both are investment worth making and both will come with fairly low interest rates we'll see you guys tomorrow at 8 p.m as we bring another great conversation to your screen ciao bye