By Muktar Tahir — The Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, has sponsored the publication of 10 new textbooks written by Nigerian academics to address over-dependence on foreign publications in tertiary institutions.
Speaking during the public presentation of the books in Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, warned that the dependence on foreign academic publications portends great danger to the nation’s education sector.
Mr Adamu, represented by the Minister of State for Education, Goodluck Opiah, said that boosting indigenous authorship would also address the problem.
“The paucity of indigenously authored and produced tertiary level textbooks and related academic publications in the nation’s tertiary education institutions is a known fact overtime.
“Nigeria’s tertiary education institutions became dependent on books published outside the country with the attendant consequences of pressure on the demand for foreign exchange.
“It is equally worrisome that the quality of most academic publications in our country leaves much to be desired.
“It is therefore expected that nurturing the culture of quality authorship and the production of indigenous books will not only ensure the availability of relevant books in the diverse subject areas.
“It will also safeguard national pride and reduce the demand for foreign exchange,” he said.
He commended TETFund for establishing the Higher Education Book Development project to tackle scarcity of tertiary level textbooks which had reached a crisis proportion.
Mr Adamu, assured that an additional 30 books would be presented before the end of 2022 under TETFund sponsorship programme.
According to him, over 60 per cent of these books are to be published by the Academic Publishing Centres, APCs, established by TETFund.
Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, who expressed delight over the quality of the books assured of the readiness of the Fund to sponsor the production of 50 textbooks in 2023.
“We have over 66 manuscripts, what we are unveiling today were published by only one publisher.
“By the time we unveil the remaining 30 in December, you are going to see all the authors which cut across the three layers of our tertiary education institutions,” he said.
Mr Echono also revealed that the Fund had provided support to ensure that all the Academic Publishing Centres in the country became fully operational.
“There are seven of them across the country, when we came in March, only the University of Lagos Academic Publishing Centre was fully functional and running.
“A few of them had little issues, some equipment, others contractual issues, but we have resolved all of them now.
“Four have been completed in the last few months and the remaining we hope to finish by the end of September.
“The issue of operationalising them, making them self-sustaining is the debate we are having currently because we want them to run as a business enterprise and trying to create balance by focusing on academic publishing,” he said.
