By Daniel Kelechi and Daniel Nnam
The Bursar of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Mrs. Oluwafunmilola Yetunde Adekunle, has clarified that excess payments made by students before the slight reduction in fees for the 2023/2024 academic session have been added to the fees paid for the 2024/2025 academic session.
Mrs. Adekunle stated this during an interview with UNILAG Sun which took place on Friday, 3rd January 2025.
The bursar explained why students who paid before the reduction in obligatory fees during the last session did not get their refund even after submitting their bank details as requested by the university.
“When the fees were reduced, the decision was to refund students. But when we tried to refund the first set of students, we ran into this challenge of students using Fintech banks like OPay, so we decided that we would refund only final year students because they are not coming back,” she said.
“ For the other category of students, we agreed that it will be used to reduce their fees since they are coming back in the next session.”
UNILAG Sun has confirmed from various students that the overpayment made for the last session has been deducted from the fees generated on their portal for the 2024/2025 academic session.
“Mine was deducted from the utility fee and obligatory fee. Five thousand Naira and 20 thousand Naira was removed from my utility and obligatory fee respectively, making it a total of twenty-five thousand Naira reduction”, one of the students, Gbemisola Olaoye, 300-level Mass Communication, said.
Addressing challenges concerning National Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Mrs. Adekunle said that the school has received two tranches of loan applications from the 2023/2024 academic session. However, according to her, the loan fund for the 2024/2025 academic sessions is yet to be disbursed by the federal government.
The bursar, however, noted that the university has not been able to refund some students whose funds have been made available to the university due to a lack of access to the bank details of the students.
“For the NELFUND loan for 2023-2024, we have received two tranches. One of our major delays is that when funds come, we need to send it to the CITS unit that gives us the name of the student who applied. But the list doesn’t have the students’ bank details.”
She added that a Google form was sent out for those whose loan has been approved to fill in their bank details but the response rate has been very low. However, she said that the Dean of Student Affairs office will see to the challenge so that students whose money has been released will get their refund.
Waoh! This is a new development, I don’t know If we can still access this student loan to pay school fee this January?
Yes