Gratitude or Political Theatre? NELFUND Students Donate ₦10.7m for Tinubu's 2027 Form and Nigeria Has Questions
Summary
Beneficiaries of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund in Anambra State have publicly endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second term in office donating ₦10,735,500 toward the purchase of his 2027 expression of interest form at a ceremony held at Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam campus, on Friday. Chairman of the National Association of Nigerian Students Joint Campus Council in Anambra State, Ifeanyichukwu Chukwuemeka, described the gesture as a symbolic appreciation for what he called transformative educational reforms introduced under the Tinubu administration. But even before the cameras had packed up, Nigerians were asking a harder question: how exactly do students living on government loans raise ten million naira for a political donation?
The event had all the right elements. A university campus. Student leaders in matching outfits. Speeches about access, opportunity, and gratitude. A cheque for ₦10,735,500 raised, they said, by young Nigerians who had benefited from a government education loan and wanted the president to know it.
The endorsement and donation were presented at the Igbariam campus of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University on Friday, May 8, 2026 with student representatives from various tertiary institutions across Anambra State gathered to formally back President Tinubu's anticipated 2027 presidential bid. "We, the beneficiaries of the NELFUND scheme, are collectively endorsing President Bola Tinubu for a second term in office in recognition of the transformative impact of the programme on access to higher education and the reduction of financial burdens on students," Ifeanyichukwu Chukwuemeka told the gathering.
The NELFUND programme, it must be said, is not an empty initiative. The Federal Government has disbursed ₦86 billion to 449,000 students through the scheme the stated aim being to ensure no Nigerian student is denied an education based on financial background. Students across various institutions have continued to apply, with government officials insisting the initiative is designed to guarantee that no qualified Nigerian is locked out of tertiary education due to financial constraints. For students who have actually received the loans and stayed in school because of it, the desire to say thank you is not, in itself, difficult to understand.
But ₦10.7 million is not a thank-you card.
Beyond the endorsement itself, the gathering acknowledged the involvement of regional stakeholders including South-East Coordinator of the City Boys Movement, Obinna Iyiegbu, popularly known as Obi Cubana citing his role in youth empowerment and the coordination of the event. That name, Obi Cubana, landed differently in several quarters. He is not a student. He is one of the most politically connected businessmen in southeastern Nigeria, with documented ties to the APC. His presence even peripherally in a supposed student grassroots endorsement immediately rewired the optics of the entire occasion.
The development quickly sparked debate across social media and political circles, with many Nigerians questioning why students and loan beneficiaries would donate money toward politics during a period of economic hardship. "Deeply disappointed in these NELFUND students from Odumegwu Ojukwu University. Instead of fighting for better education and a functional system, they're donating ₦10.7M to fund Tinubu's 2027 campaign? Totally confused priorities," one commentator wrote on X.
Critics pointed out a basic arithmetic problem: NELFUND loans to individual students range from approximately ₦100,000 to ₦200,000 per student per session. To raise ₦10.7 million purely from NELFUND beneficiaries, between 53 and 107 students would need to donate their entire loan disbursement students who, by the nature of the loan, are financially constrained enough to require government assistance in the first place. That's not impossible. But it is, as one analyst put it, economically improbable.
This is not the first endorsement of its kind. Youth groups in Kogi State recently donated ₦100 million toward Tinubu's future nomination forms part of a broader wave of pre-campaign mobilisation that is intensifying as 2027 draws closer. The APC machinery, it appears, is beginning its fundraising and optics operation well ahead of schedule.
Analysis
There are two ways to read what happened at Igbariam on Friday. The charitable reading is that a group of students, genuinely relieved that they could stay in school because of NELFUND, decided to express that relief politically and that someone with means helped coordinate the logistics. That's not an unprecedented thing in Nigerian political culture. Gratitude, in this country, often finds expression through alignment. The less charitable reading and the one that the arithmetic strongly supports is that this was a carefully choreographed political transaction: money sourced from APC aligned networks, routed through student organisations with a long history of serving as political vehicles, and packaged as grassroots appreciation for public consumption. The NELFUND branding was the narrative cover. The students were the human face. The cameras were the point. The geographic calculation is impossible to ignore. Anambra is in the South-East a region that delivered very little for Tinubu in 2023 and where his 2027 strategy requires visible penetration. A high profile student endorsement from a southeastern campus, amplified by Obi Cubana's network and picked up by national media, is worth far more to the presidency than ₦10.7 million in political form fees. It is a signal to the region, to the party, and to whoever is watching from Aso Rock that the South-East outreach is producing returns. None of this means NELFUND is without value. It isn't. Hundreds of thousands of students have accessed loans they genuinely needed, and the programme deserves credit for that. But a government initiative's genuine impact and the political theatre built around that impact are two separate things. Conflating them which is precisely what Friday's event was designed to do is how public resources get laundered into campaign capital while the students holding the cheque smile for the cameras. The harder question, ultimately, is not where the money came from. It's what it says about the state of student leadership in Nigeria that the National Association of Nigerian Students an organisation that should be holding government accountable on loan disbursement delays, on unpaid TVET stipends, on crumbling campus infrastructure is instead presenting endorsement cheques at pre-campaign rallies. That's not gratitude. That's a misdirection. And Nigeria's students deserve better than to be used as its vehicle.
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