At TETFund, we’ve entrenched accountability, transparency in our operations —Baffa

The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Dr. Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, in this interview with journalists covering the education sector, spoke about the TETFund he met on assumption of office, how he has run the agency since then, and plans for capacity development of lecturers in Nigeria’s tertiary education sector over the next five years. CLEMENT IDOKO brings excerpts.

HOW did you receive the announcement that you would head TETFund.

It was a mixed feeling. When I heard the announcement of my appointment as Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), it dawned on me that a weighty responsibility was put on my shoulders; that the president had vested massive trust in me. There was also a sense of fear. As an insider in the higher education system, I am aware of the mess this critical, strategic and huge establishment of government (TETFund) was in at the time of my appointment. So, what it means was that the responsibility to clear the mess and reposition the organization for efficient service delivery had fallen on my shoulders. But we thank God Almighty for granting us the opportunity to be able to get on with the job.

Where do you place the Buhari administration’s thrust of accountability and his anti-corruption drive in this perspective?

In the first place, the agenda of the Buhari administration regarding accountability and the fight against corruption is the fulcrum upon which we anchor everything we do at the TETFund. The fight against corruption; the fight against impunity in administration and governance is the fulcrum upon which we build everything that we are doing. As a service agency; as an intervention agency, we know that value for money, protecting the public interest and protecting our investments are vital priorities, given the messy background and the history of TETFund before we came in. We must, therefore, prioritize accountability and anti-corruption in the management of our affairs.

The recent history of TETFund before the coming in of the President Buhari administration clearly shows that to reset the operations of the agency the number one priority must be to fight corruption, deal with fraud, fight incompetence and insincerity which had characterized some of the operations of the agency. So, really, I must say that we have taken the anti-corruption drive of the Buhari administration as the number one priority as far as our operations are concerned.

Can you highlight some of the rot you met at TETFund and how you dealt with it?

When we came, the house was almost upside down in the sense that we met an agency where the primary purpose of establishing the agency, which is to intervene in specific areas regarding investments and financing, was relegated to the background. The Annual Direct Disbursement (ADD) for the Year 2015 allocation was only 20% of the total allocation for that year, while Special Intervention, which is discretionary, was 80% of the allocation for that year! That is a recipe for corruption, impunity and fraud! Against this background, the first thing we did was to suspend projects under Special Intervention. For all the Special Intervention allocation for the Year 2014 and Year 2015 for which money had been disbursed already, we approved that they continued but ensured that they were done in accordance with the approval given. However, all other allocations and discretionary allocations for which TETFund had paid no money were cancelled. Interestingly, we made good savings of about N78 billion from that cancellation. We ploughed that money into the Year 2016 allocation, and we were able to pursue the completion of those Special Projects as approved in the Approval-in-Principle, and as approved in the Bill of Quantities for which the institutions and the vendors have agreed.

It is also useful to note that in many instances, we found situations where the contractors refused to even make available the Bill of Quantities to the beneficiary institutions. Contractors were acting like demigods; we are bringing money to you, so we will do what we like with it. We have changed all that.

In one of our meetings with the heads of institutions, we got them to involve law enforcement agencies because there were cases where contractors collected first tranche payment and disappeared. There were cases where contractors deployed to the site, started working and also disappeared. There were cases where contractors did not do up to half of the project, and they were claiming they had worked and wanted to be paid the close-out amount so that it would be taken as though they had completed the projects. There were also cases where the things that were in the Bill of Quantities were not what were supplied to the institutions. We identified all these cases, and we were able to resolve all of them.

In many instances, contractors would come to me and say for these and these things or projects, we have not been paid and I would tell them that we at TETFund, we don’t deal with contractors of tertiary education institutions. I would say to them that our clients are the beneficiary institutions. I would ask them to go back to the institutions concerned. If you insist that your project is meant to be A, B, C, but you have done only A, what happened to the rest? Contractors tend to influence the report that is sent to us at TETFund stating that the work has been completed; that they have finished the work and want to be paid, while in actual fact what is on the ground is totally different; that they have delivered on many things or provided what they are supposed to provide. Many of them realised that we have eyes and ears beyond the formal process. Indeed, we have eyes and ears beyond the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, and we have means of knowing whether a project was done properly or if it was not done properly. So, they return to the site. If they manage to complete the work, we pay them, and we have been doing that. Others would return to the site and supply the missing items, the missing equipment, the disappeared procurement items which they ought to have provided. When they do that, we have no problem with them, because ours is to protect the public interest and obtain value for money. Approval is given to you to do A, B and C, and you are supposed to do A, B and C before we pay; if you have done A, B and D instead of A, B and C or you have done A and C, we will not pay. And I am delighted to say that in quite some institutions, the heads of these institutions had to involve law enforcement agencies. They had to bring in the ICPC, the EFCC and the police before they eventually got some contractors to go back to the site and complete the projects. Indeed, some of these projects are now being completed. Yes, were able to tackle these infractions decisively.

Another area where we met real mess was in the implementation of the TETFund scholarships, what you call the Academic Staff Training and Development (AST&D). The scholarships are part of the capacity building intervention aimed to build the capacity of scholars working in our universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education and to create an opportunity for them to pursue higher degrees for Masters and Ph.D both at home and abroad. But we realized that in quite some beneficiary institutions, the guidelines for the scholarships award were being implemented in the breach. Beyond violating the guidelines, many of the beneficiary scholars who were given money to go and pursue their studies abroad refused to go and have spent the money on something else. We further realized that in a few institutions they were not giving the scholars the total money that was approved for them. They deduct certain percentage using different sort of names like administrative charges, and all sorts of illegal deductions. There are also scholars that were given the approval to go to Europe or to go the USA, for example, but they end up going to some African countries. Some scholars were given the authorization to do Ph.D., but they go and register for a Master’s degree. But the worst of them were scholars who will collect the money and refuse to go.

Now, all these were fuelled by apparent disobedience to the directives of the Fund as it relates to the beneficiary institutions. The guidelines require all beneficiary institutions to pay the scholar their living costs on an annual basis and to pay their tuition to the training institutions also on annual basis. However, institutions would take the entire money and pay to the scholar, 100 per cent. Let us say you are going to study in the United Kingdom for a PhD and you are given N30 million to cover the cost of tuition and maintenance for the duration  of your studies, let’s say for three years. The institution is supposed to pay you only your living cost for the first one year, and will not make any advance payment to you of the living costs for the second year after being satisfied that you are making progress with the programme. The same thing happens for the subsequent years until the end of the programme. Also, they are supposed to pay the tuition fees for the first year, when you submit progress report they pay the fees for the second year and subsequent years etc. But what obtained in the past was that these institutions would pay the entire money and pay into the account of the scholar. Instead of complying with our guidelines, they do their own thing. They pay the money to the scholars directly and the scholars would collect the money and refuse to go. Imagine a situation in which someone has never seen a N2 million or even N1 million at once in his account, and in one fell swoop you deposit N30 million in one fell swoop in his account. Then he would start thinking what would he do; to take all the money abroad all because of PhD? Then people would refuse to go.

What is TETFund doing about this category of scholars or the beneficiary institutions involved in this violation of the TETFund’s guidelines on staff training and development?

What we did was to conduct what we call Scholarship Audit. Once we identify a violation or a breach of the terms of the guidelines by the beneficiary institution, we will not give you any money again for subsequent years until we have seen sufficient evidence that you are recovering the funds that you have paid to these defaulting staff or scholars. Right now we are making progress with recoveries of funds from quite some scholars who have collected the money but refused to go. Recoveries are being made from scholars that were given approvals to go for one programme and they ended up going for another. Also, recoveries are being made from scholars that have been given money to go to one country and they ended up going to another country.

What is TETFund under your watch doing to forestall such breaches and prevent the type of recent outcry over alleged stranded scholars?

We have systematized the process in such a way that it is going to be almost impossible for anyone to commit any fraud. For example, we insist that as one of the necessary conditions for disbursement of scholarship fund, we must see evidence that the beneficiary institution has opened a domiciliary account, since the scholarship money is supposed to be kept in a domiciliary account to protect the value. Also, we are now paying tuition fees directly to the training institutions on an annual basis. So the beneficiary institutions will only be receiving the living cost which they will remit to the scholars on a yearly basis.

We have also taken the firm view that not all countries have the quality university system to train our scholars. We have also determined the universities where our scholars should and will be trained in those countries. If you are sending your lecturers to go to mushroom universities abroad, those at the bottom of the league, there is no way someone trained in bottom of the league universities will come and lift your university to the top of the league university. Indeed, there is no way someone who trained in the bottom of the league university where the culture of learning is even much weaker than the culture of learning in our institutions at home will come back and raise the culture of learning and organis research in out tertiary education institutions.

What about the issue of conferences? What have you done to curtail it from being just a jamboree from TETFund scholars?

The same also goes for conference attendance. We spend billions of naira supporting and promoting scholars to attend international conferences, local conferences at home and abroad. We, however, realised that a number of these conferences were just talk shows or jamborees. We were giving money to scholars to go just on a picnic, for the simple reason that many third party conferences, predatory conferences, scam conferences sprang up all because of abuse of TETFund guidelines on conference attendance in the past. People who know next to nothing about academics would simply set up a consortium and go about organising conferences abroad, targeting TETFund-sponsored scholars. Every scholar knows what an academic conference is, and who organises academic conferences. And we insist that we would only spend public funds as far as conference attendance intervention is concerned on genuine academic conferences, so that we have value for money.

But when we started conducting the audit of the previous conferences that were approved, we realised that quite some people had collected the money to go to foreign conferences, and they didn’t go. So, what we are doing now is that we are going to institution by institution, auditing the conference attendance investment, so that we see the evidence that you have gone to the conference and that it is a genuine academic conference. For instance, you have been given approval to go to the United Kingdom to attend a conference. We will want to see the stamped visa in your passport when you were leaving the UK, and finally when you are coming back to Nigeria. For us, it is not enough to just show a certificate of conference attendance. In this age of technology, all sorts of things are possible; so, we will want to see the copy of your passport where it was stamped to indicate that you have travelled out and that you have attended the conference and come back.

Can you shed light on some of the policies introduced by your administration and how they are helping in reshaping things at TETFund?

When we studied the Operational Guidelines and we understood that there were quite a lot of loopholes that the beneficiary institutions and beneficiary scholars and our staff were taking advantage of, we felt that there was need to do a review and revise the guidelines in line with sound practices. We have done that and I am delighted to report that it is yielding desirable results.

In the area of physical infrastructure, for example, we realized that we will allocate hundreds of millions of Naira, sometimes billions of Naira to beneficiary institutions and they go and do whatever they like. We have introduced what we call Project Proposal Defence. When we issue allocation to a beneficiary institution, the first thing that they would have to do is to come and defend their proposal; what they intend to use the allocation for, before a panel of TETFund managers, and explain to us what they plan to do.

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Would you say the Buhari administration has indeed achieved much with TETFund, especially with the quality of academic staff?

As the scholarships award are concerned, it is gratifying to report that within the last two years alone, we have sponsored almost half of the total scholars that have been sponsored since the establishment of the scholarship 10 years ago. We started the TETFund scholarship in 2008, that is 10 years ago, and in these 10 years we have sponsored about 22,000 scholars to pursue Masters and Ph.D programmes in various fields, both at home and abroad. Of those 22,000, close to 9,000 scholars or about 41% were sponsored in the last two years, under the present administration. With all sense of modesty, I can say that this is unprecedented in the history of higher education in Nigeria. Our projection is that in the next five years, we will sponsor about 45,000 scholars for higher degrees!

Let me say all the success that we have been able to record was mainly because of the tremendous support we have been enjoying from the government. It would interest the general public that the maiden or the first intervention allocation that was approved by this present administration under President Muhammadu Buhari in Year 2016 allocation was the biggest allocation ever since the establishment of TETFund. Interestingly, this happened despite the significant drop in the government revenue due to the sharp decline in oil prices in that year. People will be wondering what was going on, whether there was any magic we were doing at TETFund; but it is not rocket science. We just realized that we should invest more in the core mandate of TETFund in the annual direct disbursement rather than spending more on the discretionary projects under the Special Intervention. As a result, we were able to allocate over a billion Naira each to all the federal and state universities, precisely, N1,009,000,000, and close to N700,000,000  each to all the federal and state polytechnics, and another N700,000,000 each to all the colleges of education owned by federal and state governments.

We have also tripled the allocation to capacity building that is the TETFund scholarships. We gave each university N300 million, each polytechnic N200 million and each college of education N200 million to support scholars to pursue higher degrees at home and abroad. These were the highest ever since the establishment of TETFund.

Can you put figures to the achievements in conference attendance and scholarship sponsorship in more precise terms?

We have sponsored more than 40,000 academic staff for local and international conferences. For the scholarships, we are very much pleased with the changes that we have brought to the implementation of the TETFund scholarships award. I have already mentioned that in only two years of the President Buhari administration, we have sponsored close to 9,000 scholars (the exact figure as at March 2018 is 8,820 scholars) to pursue higher degrees at home and abroad. Of course the numbers are on the increase and we believe they will continue to be on the increase.

As far as the implementation of the Library Intervention is concerned, we have millions of books now procured. We have supported beneficiary institutions to procure millions of volumes of holdings both in electronic and hard copy holdings over the last two years.