Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved over N683.4 billion as intervention funds for the development of the tertiary education system across the country in the year 2024
The sum to be disbursed through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETfund. represents the highest since the inception of the agency, even as it targets the N1 trillion Education tax collection in the nearest future.
The Executive Secretary, TETfund, Sonny Echono disclosed this at the Annual Strategic Planning Meeting with TETFund Beneficiary Institutions in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
He said 90 percent of the total sum is for direct disbursement and each University shall get over N1.9 billion naira.
“I am pleased to inform you that Mr. President has approved the Year 2024 disbursement guidelines in the total sum of N683,429,268,402.64.
“From this total, 90.75 % is budgeted for direct disbursement and 8.94 % for some designated special projects. A stabilization of 2.27 % is allowed to enable the Fund to respond to emerging issues.
“Based on this approval, each University shall get, for the Year 2024 intervention cycle, the total sum of N1,906,944,930.00.
“This comprises N1,656,944,930.00 as annual direct disbursement and N250 million as zonal intervention,” he said.
According to him, each Polytechnic shall also get N1.1 billion, while each College of Education shall get N1.3 billion naira.
He said the increase in the sum is due to, sustained efforts at expanding and increasing the efficiency of collection of the Education Tax, and an increase in the tax from 2.5% to 3.0% in the year 2023.
Echono disclosed the Physical Infrastructure Intervention submissions that will enable institutions to access the funds will begin as early as January 22, 2024, urging beneficiary institutions to make judicious use of the money.
“I call on all heads of institutions here present to ensure the smooth, timely, judicious, and effective implementation and utilization of the year 2024 intervention allocation, to make the much-needed impact in our respective tertiary institutions,” he said
Echono said the meeting is an avenue to receive feedback and evaluate the performance of TETfund’s intervention lines, urging the beneficiary institutions to give study grants to only those they can trust to utilize the fund effectively.
“I urge you to utilize this opportunity to discuss some of the issues affecting your institutions and our interventions or operations including constructive criticism where necessary,” he said.
Echono itemized the approved new intervention lines in the 2024 Annual Direct Disbursement to include among others, the establishment of Career Centers/Units, in all categories of beneficiary institutions as well as the Institution Based Skills development for Polytechnics.
“In response to popular demands from the Colleges of Education, the teaching practice allocation has been greatly enhanced. For the Special Direct Disbursements, we have increased the allocation for the Special High Impact Programme (SHIP), and the number of benefitting institutions has also been increased to two per geopolitical zone per category giving a total of 36 beneficiary institutions.
“Other areas of Special Direct Disbursement are provision for Hostels using the Public/Private Partnership arrangement, innovation hubs, Disaster Recovery, Security Infrastructure, Completion of abandoned projects, and many others,” he said.
The TETfund boss said arrangements have also been made to assuage challenges faced by scholars due to volatility in the exchange rate, even as it focuses on research and development in 2024.
“In our bid to resolve the problems arising from the increase in exchange rates to our scholars, we have made provisions in the Year 2024 intervention to address the shortfall therein.
“We have sustained allocations for research including the National Research Fund, Innovation Fund, Uptake of research findings to commercialization and supervision of scholars for Ph.D. research.
“We have made provisions for four central multipurpose laboratories and additional provisions for the three agricultural laboratories and demonstration farms initiated in 2023.
“We will also encourage the discovery and development of creative talents amongst scholars and especially students, as a major pillar of the renewed hope agenda of the present administration.
“We seek to deliver online access to a one-stop aggregation of online learning and course certifications from the world’s leading providers: Udemy, Udacity, and Coursera using AVIS which is an aggregated multi-provider online course learning and certification platform. This is an initiative by the Fund to sponsor beneficiary institutions’ students’ access to the course learning/certification platform.
“We will equally be expanding access for the diverse student population of the National Open University by upgrading their study centers to experience centers to facilitate improved access to teaching, learning, and research.
“There will be an upgrade of laboratories, workshops, and equipment to Universities, Polytechnics, and Colleges of Education (Technical) in the Year 2024 intervention. To this end, we have enpanelled Teams to visit institutions, access their priority needs, and make recommendations based on qualitative selection criteria. Provision has also been made for the early grade resources centers phase II to Colleges of Education.”
Echono called for an increase in the salaries of lecturers in Nigeria, saying that no professor in Nigeria earns up to N500,000 a month which is regrettable
He said because of “Poor remuneration, most of the good brains in the country are living for greener pastures in other countries of the world.”
The Minister of Information, Professor Tahir Mamman commended the TETfund for all of its efforts while urging the agency and others to redouble efforts due to the kind of support being received from the president.
“With the kind of support we are getting from the President there is a need to redouble our effort.”
He said since the beginning of the administration efforts were fine-tuned towards practical results with set out timelines for projects, which is helping to fast-track development in the sector.
He said the ministry is focussed on bringing all out-of-school children back to the classrooms, ensuring that issues of certificate racketeering that inundated the country in recent days are resolved as the committee has started sitting, stressing that “if there is doubt on any certificate in Nigeria, it affects all”
The Minister represented by the Acting Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Zubairu Abdulahi said for seamless academic sessions in tertiary institutions in the country, Unions are being carried along, while encouraging them to give constructive criticism.
The Acting Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC, in Nigeria, Dr. Chris Maiyaki said interventions by TETfund are coming at a time when there are clarion calls for rethinking the educational system in Nigeria, as questions are being asked such as: How can Nigeria have great minds and yet so much poverty?
He called for plans to begin to include private Universities as beneficiaries of TETfund, just as he supported the call for an increase in the salaries of lecturers in tertiary institutions, commended the agency for interventions, especially research grants while urging beneficiaries to utilize them effectively.
The Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education, NBTE Idris Bugaje commended TETfund for interventions in the 73 polytechnics in the country and the allocation of funds for skill acquisition centers and workshops
He, however, called for “The alteration of the sharing formulas of TETfund so that the Polytechnics can benefit more.”
Similarly, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education, NCCE Professor Paulinus Okwelle called for special intervention from TETfund in the areas of “people with special needs”, while commending the agency for fund allocations to the colleges of education.
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