Succour for Public Tertiary Institutions as TETFund Announces Intervention

TETFund Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono (right) and others at the meeting.

One of the biggest challenges confronting public tertiary education in Nigeria is funding. Due to limited resources, government at both federal and state levels struggle to provide enough funding to meet the needs of students and institutions.

Consequently, universities, polytechnics and colleges of education are struggling to provide adequate facilities and equipment. For many industry experts in the education sector, inadequate funding of tertiary education has had profound effects on teaching and research, and has forced them to embark on income generating projects in order to source alternative funds.

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), an intervention agency set up by the government, has been attempting to arrest the rot and deterioration in the educational infrastructure occasioned by long period of neglect and very poor resource allocation. Originally established as Education Trust Fund (ETF) by Act No 7 of 1993 as amended by Act No 40 of 1998 (now repealed and replaced with Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act 2011), the body was established to provide supplementary support to all levels of public tertiary institutions with the main objective of using funding alongside project management for the rehabilitation, restoration and consolidation of Tertiary Education in Nigeria.

 Every year, heads of beneficiary institutions converge at TETFund headquarters to formally receive disbursement guidelines for tertiary institutions for the following year’s intervention cycle. This year’s meeting had heads of over 200 public tertiary institutions in the country in attendance. There were also heads of regulatory agencies in the sector in attendance including, the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education.

 Setting the tone for the meeting, TETFund Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono, submitted that the session had evolved into a veritable forum for performance evaluation and fostering cross fertilization of ideas between the Fund and beneficiary institutions. The yearly event, he stated, has advanced from monologue to dialogue and that rather than shove its interventions down the throats of institutions, it now serves as an opportunity to not only dialogue, get the buy-in of institutions but also share insights and foster discussions that seek to enhance the Fund’s intervention programmes across its intervention lines.

Reflecting on the events of the outgoing year, the TETFund boss listed some of the interventions to include the development of the Information Communications Technology (ICT) roadmap culminating in the deployment of the Beneficiary Identity Management Service (BIMS), unveiling of Tertiary Education Research, Applications and Services (TERAS) platform, commencement of the designs and strategy for innovation hubs to selected beneficiary institutions as well as constitution of a committee for the establishment of two central research laboratories.

The Fund also organised series of engagements such as one-day stakeholder meeting to address challenges associated with academic staff training and development programme, TETFund Desk Officers’ Workshops held across the six-geo political zones in the country, capacity building for ICT staff and students and interactive engagement with the Unions of beneficiary institutions.

  These initiatives, he stressed, were aimed at strengthening the Fund’s intervention programmes and help receive inputs that would guide the disbursement guidelines for the year 2024 intervention.

Noting that the areas of interventions as approved by the Board of Trustees of the Fund were categorized into Annual Direct Intervention and Special Interventions, Echono highlighted proposed areas of focus under the annual direct disbursements to include the creation of career centres to all categories of beneficiary institutions and institution-based skills development for Polytechnics.

For Special Direct Disbursement, the Executive Secretary said the Fund would increase the allocation and number of beneficiary institutions for the Special High Impact Programme (SHIP).

Other areas of intervention according the Executive Secretary will include provision of hostels using the Public Private Partnership (PPP); disaster recovery, security infrastructure, completion of abandoned projects as well as sustained allocations for research, including National Research Fund; Research and Innovation Fund, up take of research findings for commercialization and provision of central multipurpose laboratories as well as agricultural laboratories/farms.

Others are supervision of scholars – Ph.D research, subscription services for fixed cable/internet access and the TERAS initiative, upgrade of laboratories, workshops and equipment to universities, polytechnics and colleges of education (Technical) for the 2024 Intervention Year.

Also included are early grade resource centres phase II to colleges of education, take-off grants to six new tertiary institutions, provision for shortfall arising from fluctuations in foreign exchange in the Academic Staff Training and Development (ASTD) Programme for foreign scholars, additional six entrepreneurship innovation hubs and national skills development programmes to selected Polytechnics and colleges of education among others.

About 90.54 per cent of taxes generated is budgeted for direct disbursement and designated 6.5 per cent for some projects and 2.94 for stabilization to enable the fund to respond to emerging issues, all of which are subject to final distribution/approvals.  Echono added that the distribution will be in the ratio of 2:1:1 among universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

“As earlier stated, the Minister of Education recently launched the TERAS platform for the digitalization and transformation of our institutions into educational information hubs in accordance with global standards. We are making consideration to specialized beneficiary institutions such as the medical universities for fellowship sponsorship on their ASTD intervention as well as the Police and military academics in areas of conference sponsorship for academic instructors.

 “We are also considering the institutional-based skills development intervention line for our Polytechnics and Colleges of Education (Technical) in line with the NBTE proposal and general desire of the Heads of our polytechnics and Colleges of Education (Technical) to enable them deepen their core areas of Mandate. These new lines of intervention were conceived in response to popular request by stakeholders.

“We shall continue to deepen research, promote innovation and honing of skills, encourage the discovery and development of creative talents amongst our scholars and especially the students as a major pillar of the renewed hope agenda of the present Administration.

“As we constantly improve the turn-around time in processing your proposals, we expect a similar level of commitment in speedy access of intervention lines and prompt payment to your contractors for executed works.  The current record with us, to put it bluntly, is pretty dismal with some institutions acquiring notoriety”, he stated.

In what stakeholders have applauded as heart-warming, cheering and gratifying, Echono announced that the agency’s 2023 collection of Education Tax was the highest in a single year since inception. He attributed the high revenue to increases approved by the former and present administrations to three per cent of accessible profit and other factors diligently implemented by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in collaboration with the Fund.

 This, he disclosed, has led to significant increase in annual direct disbursements, special direct disbursement and Special High Impact Programme of the agency.

He expressed the desire of TETFund to sustain and improve on its activities and expand them to include other areas of critical national interest and priorities in the Education Sector Road Map of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.

 He said: “I am pleased to inform you that the collection of the Year 2023 Education tax, which we are allocating for the 2024 intervention projects is the highest collection to date. This no doubt, is due to the increases approved by the former and present administrations to three per cent of accessible profit and other factors diligently implemented by the FIRS in collaboration with the Fund.

We sincerely hope and call upon the FIRS to sustain and improve the growth of the collection to enable us deliver on Mr. President’s promise to the Nigerian people and the improvement of our tertiary education sector for greater competitiveness and national development.

 “We have dedicated time and resources to address various issues affecting our interventions as identified in last year’s stakeholders meeting, and we have made significant progress in this regard. We have also achieved substantial improvements in our interventions concerning research and innovation, academic staff training and development, as well as manuscript and book development in our institutions,” he said.

In their goodwill messages, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Andrew Adejo; Executive Secretary, National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Prof. Idris Bugaje and his counterpart in National Commission for Colleges of Education, Prof. Paulinus Chijioke, stressed the need for synergy to enable TETFund to deliver on its mandate.

For Adejo, TETFfund remained one of the agencies under the ministry that gives succour as it relates to staff unions in public tertiary institutions. He recalled a recent engagement the agency had with unions in tertiary institutions where they all commended the Echono-led administration. He said: “This current administration is providing us opportunities to do what we should have started doing with our tertiary institutions many years ago: weaning universities, polytechnics and colleges of education of government resources.”

While applauding the Fund for its numerous interventions across public tertiary institutions in the country, Professor Chijioke, however appealed that emphasis should equally be placed on maintenance of infrastructures.

 “More attention should be given to maintenance. Some of these structures are decaying. They need to be maintained instead of building new ones. Let us revisit some of the old ones that are decaying.”

He urged the agency to also consider giving stipends to students of colleges of education doing Teaching Practice. This, he noted, will go a long way in boosting their morale.

In the same token, Professor Bugaje lauded the agency for exceeding the Board’s demands. Represented by the Director Administration in the Board, Mallam Lawal Afes, the NBTE Executive Secretary appreciated the Fund for getting input from heads of beneficiary institutions.