Tinubu meets Jim Ovia, NELFUND MD at State House
President Bola Tinubu is currently meeting with Jim Ovia, founder of Zenith Bank, and Akintunde Sawyerr, managing director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), at the State House in Abuja.
Ovia was said to have arrived at the State House alongside Sawyerr at about 5:15pm on Tuesday.
The meeting comes barely 48 hours after Ovia spoke about how NELFUND is expanding access to university education across the country.
Speaking in an interview aired on Channels Television on Sunday, where he reflected on some of his achievements in the banking and education sectors, Ovia, who chairs NELFUND, said many young Nigerians would not have attended university without the student loan scheme.
“Yes, NELFUND definitely is addressing (access to education), and we are glad that Bola Tinubu has introduced that by setting up NELFUND, and it’s a very encouraging initiative,” he said.
“I’ve been the chairperson of that for the past five years, and it’s very successful today. So many universities have already been benefiting from that.”
NELFUND was established in 2024 after President Bola Tinubu signed the Student Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act into law to provide interest-free loans to eligible students in tertiary institutions.
On July 4, 2026, the fund said it had disbursed over N303 billion in loans to 1,635,676 beneficiaries out of 1,800,489 applications received.
