When Nigerians awoke over the weekend, they once again came across the usual routine, a fake front page of a newspaper spreading around on WhatsApp, this time stating that President Bola Tinubu had instructed that anyone who fails to repay their education loan should be given a life sentence. By Sunday afternoon, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) had removed it from X, marking the picture with bold red letters saying “FAKE” and clearly informing Nigerians that such a policy does not exist.
The fake page had a headline reading “Tinubu: All students who fail to repay their loan after graduation will go to jail for life.” The page was dated Thursday, May 27, 2027, a date which had not yet occurred when the image first began to circulate, and this fact was one of several that revealed it as a forgery. Despite this, the message spread so quickly that NELFUND felt it necessary to issue a direct response rather than allow it to continue circulating.
“There’s no life jail term for students who fail to repay loans. The speculation is fake,” the agency said in its post.
Not the First Time
NELFUND has not been engaging for the first time with misinformation. Ever since the loan scheme was relaunched, the Fund has had to issue public statements refuting false circulars which claim that disbursements will be suspended, false notices asserting that beneficiaries have to begin repaying while they are still at school, and now this as well. There is a pattern in all this which is worth pointing out: since student loans affect millions of young Nigerians and their families directly, the subject is one that can easily be exploited by people who wish to cause panic, get clicks, or both.
What the Law Actually Says About Repayment
The false headline collapses when compared with the actual text of the Student Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act, which President Tinubu approved in April 2024 following the repeal of the problematic 2023 edition.
Repayment does not start the moment a graduate leaves school and certainly not when they are sent to jail. According to the Act, the Fund will not begin its recovery procedures until two years have passed since the beneficiary has finished the National Youth Service Corps programme or has obtained an exemption from it. However, repayment only begins when the individual is actually earning an income; a graduate who is still looking for a job is not required to repay at that stage, and if someone can show through a sworn affidavit that they are still unemployed, they can ask for more time before enforcement takes place.
When repayment starts, it is based on what an individual can afford rather than on a fixed amount that is imposed regardless of the circumstances. The amount deducted is limited to 10 per cent of gross income or salary, and in the case of beneficiaries who are on a salary, their employers make the deduction at source. Beneficiaries who are self-employed are expected to pay a comparable proportion of what they earn. Nothing in this arrangement involves a court, a judge, or a prison cell.
Where Jail Time Actually Appears in the Act
The confusion may be due to the fact that the Act does refer to imprisonment, even though not for the reason stated in the false headline. Two of the provisions include real criminal penalties, and neither of them is aimed at ordinary defaulters.
The rule in question covers anybody who lies in order to obtain a loan. A person who makes a false statement in order to get funding from NELFUND is guilty of a felony and may serve up to three years’ imprisonment if convicted. This is directed at cases of fraud during the application process and not at graduates who are merely having difficulty in finding work or in repaying what they owe.
The measure is aimed at employers, not at the students. When employing someone, companies must check the new employee’s loan status with NELFUND, and if they fail to do so they will be subject to a fine of at least ₦2 million, a prison sentence of at least one year, or both. The purpose of this is to ensure that employers actually co-operate with the deduction-at-source system rather than allow loan repayments to slip through the cracks.
The law does have consequences, but they are not the ones shown on the false front page and they are not directed at the people who were meant to be frightened.
The Numbers Behind the Panic
One of the reasons why a hoax such as this spreads so readily is the enormous size of the programme it is associated with. NELFUND opened its application portal in May 2024, first targeting federal tertiary institutions before expanding to include state-owned schools. By March 2026 the Fund had paid out more than ₦206 billion to over 1.16 million beneficiaries at 270 institutions. That amount had increased to about ₦322.69 billion by August 2026. Since so many families depended on the scheme for their children’s tuition and living expenses, a rumor stating that defaulters would face jail sentences would always spread quickly, regardless of whether it was true or not.
If you’ve seen the image, then pass on this one. It is not true that any student ends up with a life sentence for failing to repay a NELFUND loan, and there is no provision in the actual Act to that effect. Repayment is postponed, linked to income, and is capped at a reasonable proportion of earnings. The genuine legal risks outlined in the Act lie elsewhere: they concern applicants who provide false information in order to obtain a loan, and employers who fail to fulfil their reporting obligations. Apart from that, the most prudent course of action for any beneficiary at the moment is to completely ignore the viral screenshots and instead look at NELFUND’s official X account or website each time a frightening claim begins to go viral.
