Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman Ola Olukoyede has revealed that he personally approached President Bola Tinubu with the idea of channelling recovered funds from corrupt officials into the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFund).
Speaking in a media appearance on Channels TV, Olukoyede said, “I approached Mr. President and we agreed on two things. Sir, you have passed the NELFund law. But there is no money for NELFund to take off. I have a crop of hundreds of students who are into cybercrime, and upon doing my research, I discovered why they went into it. And this is because many of them could not afford to train themselves properly through school. Legitimate needs were driving them to illegitimate solutions. So I said, ‘Sir, I have some money in my recovery account. Why don’t you take part of it which is about a hundred billion, and invest it in NELFund?’”
Olukoyede said the President agreed, and the funds were split equally fifty billion naira to NELFund and fifty billion to the Credit Corporation.
He noted that in the year since the programme launched, NELFund has helped 1.3 million students pay their school fees, describing the outcome as a model for how recovered public funds can be turned into a direct tool for fighting the root causes of corruption.
