NELFUND: Portal Loan & Calc

NELFUND: Portal Loan & Calc is a study aid and calculator set for students and graduates dealing with the Nigerian Education Loan Fund. It answers two questions that the official paperwork rarely answers together: how much will actually be disbursed on my behalf, and how long will 10% of my salary take to clear it. Everything runs on the device, with no account, no login, and no internet connection required.

What the app calculates

• Loan estimator — adds institutional charges to the upkeep allowance and projects the figure per session and across the whole programme.
• Repayment simulator — shows how many months 10% of a given salary needs to clear a balance, month by month.
• Repayment timeline — works out the date of the first deduction from your service completion date, allowing for NYSC and the two-year grace period.
• Upkeep planner — breaks the monthly allowance into a daily spending figure so it lasts the whole month.
• Early payoff — shows how many months you remove from the schedule by adding a voluntary payment on top of the deduction.
• Take-home impact — shows what lands in your account after the 10% deduction, so you can budget around the real number.
• Salary needed — works backwards from a target clearance date to the gross income that would achieve it.
• Compare scenarios — puts two repayment paths side by side, so you can see the trade-off before choosing one.
• Eligibility check — walks through 15 questions drawn from the published criteria and flags the answers that would block an application.

The written guide

• What the scheme is and how the Students Loans Act 2024 created it.
• Who is eligible, and the identity trail behind it: JAMB number, matric number, NIN, BVN, direct entry, part-time study.
• The three official steps to apply, in order, with what each step needs.
• Documents and identity data, and why a name that does not match across records is the most common reason an application stalls.
• Disbursement: what goes to the school and what goes to the student.
• The upkeep allowance and how it is requested.
• Repayment: the 10% rule, self-employed earners, paying early, and relocating abroad.
• Life after graduation: NYSC, the first job, and the statement of unemployment.
• When something goes wrong: rejection, appeal, deferment, dropping out.
• Scam awareness: fee scams, fake portals, and people posing as agents.

Reference tools

Beyond the calculators, the app bundles 35 searchable FAQs, a glossary of 30 terms used in the loan paperwork, a directory of 320 participating institutions organised by state and type, national scheme figures, a document-readiness checklist, an application step tracker, and a hub of links to the official channels.

Key facts about the scheme

• The loan is interest-free. What you repay is exactly what was disbursed.
• Institutional charges are paid to the school; the upkeep allowance is paid monthly to the student, and upkeep must be requested at the same time as the institutional loan.
• Upkeep has commonly been ₦20,000 per month. Through 2026 there has been discussion of raising it to ₦25,000, and NELFUND has been moving toward per-session payments — treat both figures as indicative and confirm the current amount on the official portal.
• Repayment begins two years after NYSC is completed, at 10% of gross monthly income, capped at that 10%.
• No guarantor is required, and there is no age limit.
• Only public tertiary institutions take part: federal and state universities, polytechnics, monotechnics, and colleges of education. Private universities are not eligible.

What this app does not do

This app is not a lender and cannot lend, disburse, or recover money. It cannot submit an application, check an application status, or change anything in your loan record. It has no connection to NELFUND, to the Federal Ministry of Education, or to any government body. It will never ask for your NIN, BVN, password, or an OTP — no calculator needs them, and any app, page, or person that asks you for those outside the official portal should be treated as a scam. Nobody is required to pay a fee before a NELFUND loan is disbursed, so any request for money is fraudulent.

Applications are made only on the official NELFUND portal at https://nelf.gov.ng. Use this app to prepare, plan, and understand the numbers before you go there — the figures it produces are estimates for planning, and the amounts recorded on the official portal always take precedence.