TETFUND: No plan to extend intervention to private varsities, others —FG

THE Federal Government, on Tuesday, disclosed that it has no plan to extend intervention fund being provided by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) to private tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

Executive Secretary of TETFUND, Dr Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, said this while fielding questions from journalists in Abuja.

He also revealed that the N3 billion set aside by the government under the fund’s High Impact Research Intervention Fund was on course.

According to Baffa, the mandate of the agency is clear on its areas of intervention, which he said, are public tertiary institutions in the country, specifically Federal and state universities, colleges of education and the polytechnics.

“We don’t have any plan to extend the intervention fund to private institutions,” he said.

He noted that research remains one of the core mandate of the fund as well as bridging the infrastructural gaps in public tertiary institutions.

The new Executive Secretary of TETFund reiterated the commitment and readiness of the agency to supporting development of cutting edge research that would support the industrialisation drive of the government.

“We have been supporting research institutions, where we allocated up to N15 million for academics  in the universities and up to N10 million to academics  in polytechnics and colleges of education. These are research grants awarded to qualified scholars that participated in a rigorous process of screening, after sending their proposals.

“About N3 billion has been earmarked to support the high impact research at the National Research Fund level.

“We also distribute research funds annually to universities to support degree research, where staff of benefiting universities are conducting research and they are supported, and individual or independent research are also funded through the National Research Fund.

“Research is one of our focal point, we are determined to support cutting edge research that would lead to turn around of the fortune of Nigeria,” he said.

“Such research would increase our production and improve our efficiency and easing the lives of our citizens.

“The more we research the more we industrialise our country and the more we create more jobs,” he said.