THE executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Dr Abdullahi Baffa, says the agency is currently executing special projects worth over N156 billion in public universities, polytechnics and colleges of education across the country.
Baffa made this known in Abuja in his presentation to the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, on oversight visit to the agency.
He told members of the committee that the core mandate of the agency was to disburse funds, which is the two per cent tax on the assessable profit of private companies operating in Nigeria, for the general improvement of education in federal and state tertiary institutions across the country.
The areas of intervention are essentially physical infrastructure for teaching and learning, instructional materials and equipment, research and publication as well as academic staff training and development.
Dr Baffa explained that allocation to universities under the ongoing special projects is N74,745,400,000, with the sum of N57,757,235,651.51 already disbursed to the beneficiary institutions.
He also disclosed that the polytechnics and colleges of education had over N40 billion each allocated to the beneficiary institutions while over N30 billion each has been disbursed to them.
He explained that special projects were different from the main intervention fund that is allocated annually to all the beneficiary institutions.
According to him, the agency is currently intervening in 78 public universities, 58 polytechnics and 67 colleges of education, which are all federal and state-owned institutions.
He, however, told the committee that TETFund was yet to disburse the 2016 main allocation to the beneficiary institutions as it was still awaiting the Federal Government’s approval.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Jubrin Barau, in his remark, said the oversight visit was to ascertain the level of budget implementation as well as challenges impeding service delivery of the agency.
He commended TETFund for its visible projects in almost all the public tertiary institutions in the country, saying the Senate was ready to support the agency in actualisation of its mandate.