Tag: Student Loan

Nigerians in the nation’s capital, Abuja, tell the international media that while they support President Bola Tinubu’s new student loan bill, they have concerns about how it would really be implemented.

The new policy, which the president signed into law on Monday, offers financial support for poorer students in higher education by enabling them to easily get interest-free loans from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund to cover tuition fees.

However, students could face two years imprisonment or a 500,000 naira ($1,000; £790) fine if they default on repayments once eligible to do so.

“I think it’s a very good idea and it’s going to help students,” one young woman tells the BBC, adding that people should not just “collect loan and relax”, referencing the strict rules regarding repayment or jail time.

One student says the policy is good as fees have increased exponentially.

However his “biggest worry is how the policy will be driven to a logical conclusion”, because Nigeria struggles to execute good policies, he says.

Beneficiaries of the loan are expected to start repayment as soon as they gain employment, following the completion of their studies and mandatory national service.

Most have requested anonymity or, like Zeinab, used a pseudonym for fear of reprisals against them and others.

Both Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have accused their enemies of such attacks.

And human rights lawyer Jehanne Henry said that indeed both sides have committed “notorious acts of sexual violence” in the past.

The governmental Combating Violence Against Women and Children Unit documented 49 assaults in the first two weeks of the war.

In all but six cases, survivors identified perpetrators “in RSF uniform,” said unit chief Sulaima Ishaq al-Khalifa, adding that there are “new reports night and day.”

No woman is safe

“There is not a single woman in Khartoum now who feels safe, not even in her own home,” al-Khalifa said.

The worst fighting has raged in Khartoum and the Darfur region, where former autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir once unleashed the notorious Janjaweed militia from which the RSF emerged.

In their scorched-earth campaign since 2003, they committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, according to the International Criminal Court.

Now mass rapes are again being reported in Darfur, said Adjaratou Ndiaye, the U.N. Women representative in Sudan.

Documented cases, like wider casualty counts, are likely “the tip of the iceberg,” said a Sudanese Women Rights Action group researcher.

Medics say many victims receive no care as hospitals have been ransacked or destroyed.

Many cases have been reported by civil society groups known as resistance committees, which long campaigned for democracy.

A lawyer who has long documented sexual assaults by security forces, said the scourge now impacts “every segment of Sudanese society.”

“We have seen the rape of young girls and old women, mothers with their children,” she said, adding that to the perpetrators “it doesn’t matter.”

Amid dire shortages, health workers have struggled to provide HIV medication or emergency contraceptives.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said a member of the Central Committee of Sudanese Pharmacists.

Activists and medics are trying to document every attack. The aim, said the lawyer, is “to ensure there is no impunity.”

Zeinab hopes the rapists will one day face justice but voices resignation.

“I shared my testimony to try and stop this happening to others, to tell them the road isn’t safe,” she said. “But even when I filed the police report, I knew nothing would come of it. They’re never going to get the men who did this.”