Nigeria introduces tokenised payments to fix student loan refund crisis

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) launched a new tokenised payment system in October 2026 to resolve a crisis where students were forced to pay tuition twice due to administrative delays.

The Nigerian government, under President Bola Tinubu, established NELFUND to provide student loans as a key part of its political agenda. By November 2026, the fund had reached a total disbursement of ₦375.28 billion for over 1.6 million loans.

The system was designed to send money directly to students for upkeep and to schools for tuition fees to bypass human middlemen. However, many public universities and polytechnics used manual paper-based accounting systems that could not process these automated transfers quickly enough. Because the federal funds arrived later than campus deadlines, many students and parents paid their fees out of pocket using private loans to secure exam access.

When the federal money finally arrived, many schools lacked the automated tools to issue refunds, leaving students trapped in a bureaucratic cycle of seeking lost paperwork. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and NELFUND launched an investigation into 34 institutions accused of withholding these duplicate payments. Additionally, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) investigated discrepancies in how initial seed money was reported. To fix these issues, NELFUND introduced a cryptographic token system.

This allows students to click a button on a portal to trigger a payment directly to the school, preventing the need for manual refunds and stopping schools from imposing unapproved tuition hikes.