From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved N292.6 billion for disbursement to publicly owned Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education as Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) 2021 interventions.
Breakdown of the figure indicated that each public university is allocated N906 million while N628 million was allocated to each Polytechnic and College of Education.
Executive Secretary, TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, who disclosed the development at a meeting with the heads of beneficiary institutions in Abuja, on Tuesday, added that N8.5 billion was reserved for special impact research and development.
He told the Vice Chancellors andheads of institutions that TETFund board of trustee has delisted some courses, especially non science courses in list of those that are qualified for grant for foreign capacity training.
He explained to them the processes that culminated in the approval of the budget by the President, thus urging the beneficiary institutions to judiciously use the fund for the betterment of the institutions.
He also highlighted other interventions in medical research, clinical purposes, human capital development, military hardware development, power, and several other areas needed for national development.
He was delighted that Nigeria is moving closer to an emergence of a National Research and Development Foundation, and challenged academics in the country to turn around the fortunes of the country through cutting- edge research.
He further appealed: “Let us apply our innovative research outcome to solve the security problem, and bring back value addition to the solid minerals that we are blessed with. It’s one gold we have not explored to any significant level.”
On the 2021 research grants to lecturers, Bogoro called on the nation’s academics to live up to expectations by churning out good proposals, with reassurance that the Fund is ready to finance such academic exercise.
“I have signed the letters of allocation for the research grants that we are issuing out, 217. This is the highest research grant ever. It has never gone beyond 200. We have 217 research grants that have recently been approved,” Bogoro said.
Speaking on the recent special allocations by the TETFund’s Board of Trustees (BoT), Bogoro revealed that N5 billion each was approved for University of Lagos (UniLag) and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, for massive infrastructural projects’ development and upgrade of existing ones.
The TETFund boss also stated that N1 billion was also approved for the fencing of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and another N1billion for Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo, adding that more tertiary institutions would benefit from the special allocations in not too distant time.