Tertiary education students who visit the Nigeria Education Loan Fund website to make enquiries about student loans are having their personal data collected without any privacy policy in place, raising serious concerns about the protection of their information.

A review of the NELFUND website showed that students and other interested individuals who use the contact section to submit enquiries must provide their national identity numbers, phone numbers, email addresses and full names before a support ticket can be opened. No policy exists on the platform to explain how this sensitive information is stored, used, or protected, a requirement that is both a regulatory obligation and a basic standard for any public facing digital platform.

The Nigeria Data Protection Act stipulates that personal information belonging to citizens can only be processed under clearly defined legal conditions, with transparent disclosure to the individuals concerned. NELFUND currently meets none of those conditions for visitors to its website.

Beyond active form submissions, students who simply browse the platform without applying for a loan may also have their location specific, browser and device data passively collected. The agency provides no notice addressing this either.

The website's Legal section contains only four categories: Terms, Contact, Guidelines and Publications. The Terms page requires loan beneficiaries to "consent to the Fund or any other office authorized by law to use" their "personal details for purposes connected to the disbursement and recovery of the loan." The Guidelines section addresses criteria and procedures for eligible public schools. Neither document serves as a privacy policy.

The Nigeria Information Technology Development Agency mandates that all government websites carry a privacy policy. NELFUND, established by the current administration to provide student loan access, has not complied with that requirement, leaving the students it was created to serve without any assurance of how their data is being handled.