Fred Ezeh, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved N208 billion as 2019 Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) intervention budget for intervention activities, in accordance with the provisions of the TETFund Act 2011.
To this end, each public university in Nigeria will get N862, 684, 392.00; polytechnic gets N566, 701,842.00; and College of Education will get N542, 22, 346.00.
In 2018, N161 billion was disbursed. Each public university got N785,832,700.00; Polytechnic got N536,703,502.00; and College of Education got N510,084,900.00.
TETFund Executive Secretary, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, disclosed the information at an expanded meeting with heads of public tertiary institutions in Nigeria, in Abuja, yesterday, and added that 18 institutions across six geo-political zones would benefit from the special high impact intervention.
He said a detailed breakdown of the allocations was contained in the allocation letters given to each benefitting institution but expressed fears that the impact of TETFund intervention is seriously threatened, due to increase in number of benefiting public institutions.
Said Bagoro: “We have realised that state governments are deliberately establishing new universities with the mindset of relying on financial interventions from TETFund. That would be discussed in a forthcoming meeting with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.”
He, however, confessed that TETFund has made tremendous progress in the last few months, particularly in increase in education tax collection and strict monitoring of institutional compliance, and atttibuted it to huge support received from the Federal Government.
Acting Chairman of TETFund Board of Trustees, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, disclosed in his welcome remarks that TETFund recorded the highest number of benefitting institutions in 2019 due to increase in number of institutions.
He was, however, unhappy that “some vice chancellors don’t engage other senior management staff in the activities of TETFund,” which affected operations in the absence of the VCs or whoever supervises the projects.