The National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, on September 28, 2026, did not just issue a rebuttal to former Senator Dino Melaye. It launched a full-scale personal attack, calling a former leader of its own movement a “dolt,” an “uninformed dullard,” “clueless,” and a “comedian” whose political life is “washed-up.”
The trigger was Dino Melaye’s claim that the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, only pays N20,000 to students in higher institutions.
NANS President, Dist. Comr. Akinteye Babatunde Afeez, said he could not ignore what he called Melaye’s “sheer ignorance and public display of folly” and decided to set the record straight in the interest of national interest.
At the substance of the disagreement, NANS is factually correct. NELFUND is structured in two parts. Tuition and institutional charges are paid directly to universities, polytechnics and colleges, while the N20,000 is a monthly upkeep support paid into students’ bank accounts. The fund also provides interest-free loans. To reduce the entire scheme to the upkeep component, as Melaye allegedly did, is a misrepresentation of how the scheme works. NANS rightly pointed out that the official NELFUND platform clearly distinguishes between institutional payments and upkeep payments, and that millions of students and families are currently benefiting from the intervention to break financial barriers to higher education.
But where NANS wins on facts, it loses heavily on tone, language and strategic judgment. And that is where this press release becomes a case study in how not to defend government policy.
First, the language is unpresidential for a national student body. A statement signed by the President of all Nigerian students calling a former senator and former student leader a “dolt, an uninformed dullard” and describing his intervention as “pathetic” and “How pathetic!” reduces a policy debate to street abuse. NANS is supposed to be the moral conscience of the student movement, not its insult wing. When the association says “it is imperative, in the interest of the national interest,” then proceeds to use five paragraphs of name-calling, it undermines the very national interest it claims to protect.
Second, the attack is politically selective and personal. NANS went out of its way to say Melaye “as a Senator, did not give scholarships to any student” and that he has been “a comedian since he lost his return bid to the Senate.” What does Melaye’s scholarship record or his entertainment career have to do with whether NELFUND pays N20,000 or pays tuition? Nothing. This is ad hominem. It suggests the release was less about educating the public on NELFUND and more about humiliating a known critic of the current administration. That is dangerous for NANS because it paints the association as a political attack dog rather than an independent student union.
Third, the statement exposes a growing intolerance for criticism of government programs, even flawed criticism. Dino Melaye is entitled to be wrong. If he got the N20,000 figure wrong, the responsible thing is to correct him with data: how much has been paid to institutions, how many students have received tuition, how many have received upkeep, what are the repayment terms. Instead, NANS advised him to “enjoy his political sabbatical” and “focus more on his already washed-up political life.” That is not a factual rebuttal; that is a gag order.
The irony is even deeper. Dino Melaye himself is a product of the student movement. He was once NANS-adjacent, a former student leader. For NANS to publicly label him a “former student leader who is supposed to be informed” and then dismiss him so contemptuously shows a break in the solidarity that the student movement once claimed.
In the end, both sides lose. Dino Melaye, if he indeed reduced NELFUND to N20,000, displayed ignorance of a scheme that has become a lifeline for many indigent students. He should have verified before speaking. NELFUND is far bigger than upkeep allowance and misrepresenting it misleads students who desperately need information.
But NANS, in its bid to defend NELFUND, has displayed something worse than ignorance: institutional indiscipline. You do not defend a student loan scheme by calling a citizen a dolt. You defend it with facts, figures, testimonies and transparent data. By choosing insults over information, NANS has turned a winnable factual argument into a public spectacle of intemperate language, and has inadvertently given Dino Melaye more attention than his original claim ever deserved.
