The Board of Trustees of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, has approved an increase in the National research fund to N8.5billion in 2021 from N7.5billion.
The board also announced a total of N5billion in special intervention to the University of Lagos, UNILAG, to be captured in the 2021 budget.
The Chairman, TETFund Board of Trustees, Alhaji Kashim Imam, disclosed this at a two-day capacity building workshop for heads of beneficiary institutions and staff of TETFund centres of excellenc, in Abuja.
Imam said the intervention to UNILAG, which was on the orders of President Muhammadu Buhari, was also carried out in University of Abuja in 2020.
He stressed the importance of research as a prerequisite for national development, adding that no nation can develop without research
Academic development programme
On the academic development programme of the fund, he said the list of scholars sponsored by TETFund for PhDs and Masters was incredible, warning that if the country funds infrastructure without research and scholarships, the institutions would only be half fulfilled.
He announced that TETFund will add another 12 centres of excellence next year and allocate N1billion to each.
“Six state Universities and six Polytechnics will be added to the centres of excellence next year, and 70% of the funds will be for research funding”, he said.
Centre of excellence project
Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof Suleiman Bogoro, said the TETFund centres of excellence project is, at the first instance, a zonal tertiary education project designed to promote specialisation among participating universities within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics(STEM), Agriculture, Health areas, among others.
Bogoro said the project is geared towards addressing identified national development challenges, as well as strengthening the capacities of beneficiary universities to deliver high quality training and applied research.
“Within the 5-year gestation period of the TCOE Project, we await success stories and manifest achievements that will stretch the limits of our expectations”, he said.
He stressed the need for collaboration, noting that for the first time in the history of TETFund, provision is being made for collaboration in the 2021 budget.
Nneka Ukachukwu
