NELFUND Plans Parents’ Portal to Check School Fees as Digital Wallet Pilot Begins

• NELFUND plans a parents’ verification portal to confirm school-fee payments while piloting a restricted digital wallet that lets students authorise payments directly to their institutions.

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, has announced plans for an online portal that would allow parents to verify whether their children’s school fees have been paid through the student loan scheme.

The initiative accompanies a digital wallet pilot designed to give beneficiaries control over authorising approved institutional payments while preventing the diversion of funds.

NELFUND Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Akintunde Sawyerr, disclosed the measures during a press briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, October 28, 2026.

He said the changes were intended to improve transparency, reduce duplicate payments and address communication gaps between the fund, institutions, students and their families.

Parents would check payment status using matriculation numbers

Under the proposed arrangement, parents would enter their children’s matriculation numbers to establish whether the relevant fees had been settled or remained outstanding.

The platform would display payment status without showing the amount involved or other sensitive financial information.

Sawyerr said the proposal followed concerns that some beneficiaries continued requesting tuition money from their families without disclosing that NELFUND had already covered the fees.

The parents’ portal remains a planned service. The announcement does not establish that it is already available for public use.

How the restricted digital wallet would work

The payment system would allow students to authorise approved fees through a digital token linked to their institution.

Once authorised, the payment would go directly to the designated school. Students would not receive the tuition money as cash or be able to transfer it into their personal bank accounts.

NELFUND official Mustapha Iyal explained that the arrangement is neither a personal wallet nor a mobile money wallet. Each token would be restricted to the institution for which the fees were approved.

He confirmed that pilot implementation had begun.

Duplicate payments can also result from communication failures

NELFUND said not every duplicate payment involves deliberate misconduct.

In some cases, students paid their fees independently because they were unaware that the fund had already transferred money to their institutions. Discovering the duplication later left them seeking refunds from their schools.

The revised process aims to make students aware of approved payments and involve them directly in authorising the transactions.

Officials also said institutions would need to acknowledge payments promptly. Under the proposed process, beneficiaries could obtain receipts from their schools’ bursary or finance departments after payment.

Regional workshops planned for NELFUND 2.0

The fund also plans regional workshops across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to prepare stakeholders for its upgraded application system, known as NELFUND 2.0.

Participants would include institutional heads, bursars, information technology administrators, students and community representatives.

The sessions are intended to improve application processing, verification, technical readiness and understanding of the revised payment arrangements.

Iyal urged prospective beneficiaries to apply early, rather than waiting until examinations or fee-payment deadlines approach, when processing delays could create additional difficulties.

Pilot does not mean universal availability

The digital wallet pilot and the proposed parents’ portal are at different stages of development.

Students and parents should therefore distinguish the announced plans from services already accessible through their institutions. A public launch date and complete access instructions for the parents’ portal were not provided in the announcement reviewed.