By Muktar Tahir
The Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions has commended the leadership of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, on what it described as impressive budget performance for a two-year period between 2021 and 2022.
The Chairman of the Committee and Senator representing Katsina North, Ahmed Babba-Kaita, made the commendation on Wednesday during an oversight visit by the members of the committee to the TETFund’s headquarters in Abuja.
Mr Kaita rated the Fund high in terms of judicious utilization of taxpayers’ money towards the provision of major infrastructure and other interventions in the country’s tertiary institutions.
He said: “We are very delighted to embark on this oversight. For us, it is a homecoming. Your Executive Secretary as you know was a Permanent Secretary in the main ministry and we know him to be a performer extraordinaire.
“We want to believe that the same energy, intensity, the same character and vision he showed in the ministry will be replicated here and even more.
“Recall that upon the enactment of the 2022 Appropriation Act, the Senate resolved that Committees should embark on oversight visits of MDAs under their jurisdictions.
“Consequent upon the above, the Committee commenced this oversight with the main minister, the Federal Ministry of Education, yesterday and today we are here in TETFund.
“TETFund, as we know, is an intervention agency set up to provide supplementary support to all levels of public tertiary institutions with the main objective of using funding project management for the rehabilitation, restoration and consolidation of tertiary education of Nigeria.”
Earlier in his presentation, the TETFund Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono, disclosed that the harmony between members of the national assembly and the education sectors was largely responsible for most of the achievements in the education sector.
He said: “Our interventions are primarily directed at the improvement of structure, manpower development and researches.
“In 2020, out total education tax receipt amounted to about N257billion which were utilized for the 2021 interventions.
“Unfortunately, last year this figure fell sharply to 189.5billion, resulting from the reduced collection of tax. Representing about 30 per cent reduction in our receipts and this what we are operating with this year.
“In 2021, N214billion was disbursed to the institutions. In 2022, I want to stress that we have had the largest disbursement to our institutions in the last seven or eight years.
“In terms of manpower development, over 35,000 academic staff have been trained in both foreign and local institutions. We hope to expand that in the future.
“We are also pursuing partnerships and negotiations with institutions to ensure that we train our academic staff on free tuition and in other cases at discounted rates.
“There is a huge emphasis on research. It is in the news recently that we have intervention in COVID-19 vaccine production. TETFund-sponsored vaccine will be ready for clinical trial by November.”
