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TetFund Disburses N300bn to 220 Institutions

In a bid to sustain the tempo of human and infrastructural development in the nation’s tertiary institutions, the Tertiary Education Fund (TetFund) has this year disbursed over N300 billion this year to about 226 tertiary institutions in the country for staff training and development of various infrastructure.

Speaking in Asaba at an audit and accounts reconciliatory meeting with the benefiting institutions in Delta State, the Chairman, Board of Trustees, TetFund, Alhaji Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, reiterated the agency’s commitment to its statutory mandates towards the overall development of the country’s tertiary education sub-sector.

He noted that TetFund was committed to building the education sector through training of the academic staff and the building of projects such that would guarantee improved and conducive teaching and learning environment.

He disclosed that in 10 years of TetFund, the agency has more than 10,000 projects to its credit across the various tertiary institutions in the country.

Ibrahim-Imam said, “Our performance impact is visible in every institution. At the University of Lagos alone, we have 75 completed and ongoing projects; and, at Lagos State University, we have 68 projects.

“There is no tertiary institution that I have visited that does not have at least of 50 completed and ongoing projects which are fully funded by TetFund and I want to assure all the institutions that we are going to do much more than we have done in the past.”

Speaking about efforts in academic staff training and development, the Tetfund chairman said, “In the past 10 years, Tetfund has successfully trained more than 30,000 lecturers across the country for masters and PhD programmes locally and internationally.

“This year alone, the overall budget of Tetfund is about N300 billion. Each university will be accessing overall budget of about N900 million; each polytechnic will receive in excess of N800 million, while the colleges of education will access in excess of N700 million.

“We have about 226 tertiary institutions on our records as at the last count and we are counting more. For academic staff training and development, each university will access about N150 million, Polytechnic and colleges of education N120 million each this year.”

Nevertheless, Ibrahim-Imam said there was, “need for various institutions to examine, evaluate the costs of staff training abroad and resolved to look inward for more staff to be trained locally,” in the light of the depreciating value of naira to major international currencies.

While noting that TetFund placed high premium on academic staff training and development and was determined not to let down the standard, he said, “Yes, we spend more on physical infrastructure without which lecturers will not operate in conducive learning atmosphere.

“For this reason, physical infrastructure takes up of about two-thirds of our annual intervention but we place our premium on training of lecturers and that is why you have so many beneficiaries of our training programme here and we are here to see you physically and hear from you.

Also speaking, the Head, Academic Staff Training and Development, TetFund, Mr. Muhammad Sulaiman, stated that no fewer than 1,127 lecturers drawn from nine tertiary institutions in Delta State have been trained by Tetfund at the cost of over N5 billion between 2015 to date.

The visit was to reconcile and harmonise records with beneficiaries of the programme and also to interact with returnee scholars to tap from their experience particularly those that have travelled overseas in the period under review, he said.

“From inception, Tetfund has invested over N161 billion for staff training and over N32 billion for conference attendance and teaching practice and out of this investment, we have trained both local and international more than 30,000 academic staff across the country.

“We also sponsored over 68 conference attendants and over 79,000 for teaching practice outings.”

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