Envivo Communications, an IT Services company, has begun repaying the loans it made students take from CBN in 2020.

This comes four months after FIJ reported how the Chioma Ude-led company enrolled job seekers into tech learning programmes which were supposed to run for one year, after which beneficiaries were to get job placements.

The company sold promises of well-paying jobs to students on the condition that they applied for the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Creative Industry Financing Initiative (CIFI) loan.

Over 100 of them then applied for N3 million each. The money was to cater for a laptop, stipends and training resources, but less than a year into the programme, the students were abandoned.

READ MORE: Chioma Ude’s Envivo Communications Used 20 Students to Get N60m Loan From CBN. Now, the Students Are in Trouble

With unpaid debts, they told FIJ how they struggled to secure jobs, and how the banks kept sending threats to them.

On Thursday, David Martins (not real name), one of the affected students, told FIJ the company had cleared his debt after three years.

“The company has cleared me from the loan,” Martins told FIJ. “The Access Bank manager here told me. I went to the bank to do something for my aunt and the branch manager told me Envivo had paid. They paid in October, and I also learnt that they have paid off the debts of some of my friends too.”

Access Bank was the official bank Envivo Communications employed to create accounts for students and receive the fund from CBN.