Kikelomo Ifekoya
Tertiary institutions that have been with less than two thousand students will no longer benefit from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Olatunji Alausa announced this at a One Day Strategic Engagement with Heads of Tertiary Institutions, Bursars, Heads of procurement and TETFUND Beneficiary institutions, held at Ikeja, Lagos.
He noted that the measure was part of the federal government’s strategies aimed at ensuring that government funds were efficiently utilised.
The Minister of Education stressed that giving the same funds meant for Tertiary Institutions with high student enrollment to those with less than two thousand students would result to waste of funds as experience had shown that such funds were not usually used efficiently for the purposes for which they were released by institutions with low enrollment.
Dr. Alausa therefore, stressed that tertiary institutions like public universities, polytechnics and Colleges of education that had been operating for more than five years with less than two thousand students would need to work on improving on their student enrollment if they must have access to TETFUND intervention funds henceforth.
He also announced that reckless use of government funds by heads of Tertiary Institutions would no longer be tolerated as heads of institutions found wanting would be sanctioned.
Speaking on the 2025 TETFUND Direct Intervention fund, the Minister of Education said the funds would be directed at rehabilitating school facilities and completion of ongoing projects.
He emphasized that part of the facilities to be rehabilitated in schools include students hostels, engineering workshops and classrooms.
In a remark, the Executive Secretary, TETFUND, Mr. Sonny Echono said his agency would be giving one billion naira grant to any tertiary institution interested in venturing into agricultural research aimed at encouraging modern agricultural practice in the country.
He also announced that TETFUND had disbursed four billion naira each to eighteen tertiary institutions across the nation’s six geo-political Zones to expand their facilities and for equipment upgrade to enable them to expand their capacity to take more students in the specialized fields of Medicine, Pharmacy, nursing and dentistry.
He added that TETFUND would also give Seven Hundred and Fifty million naira each to the eighteen beneficiary institutions to build additional hostels in their medical teaching hospitals so that they would be able to have more accomodations for their clinical students after their first two years of training.
The event also attracted representatives of the National Universities Commission, NUC, National Commission for Colleges of Education, NCCE, and National Board for Technical Education, NBTE.