N150bn spent on academic staff training in three years — TETFund

THE Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has expended the sum of N150 billion on academic staff training in the last three years, in both the federal and state universities across the country.

Chairman, Board of Trustees, TETFund, Ibrahim-Imam Kashim, who made this known during the inauguration of the governing councils of some federal universities by the Federal Government in Abuja, commended President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration for placing premium on education.

He explained that the money was spent between 2018 and 2021 on the ‘Academic Staff Training and Development’ alone as part of efforts to improve on the capacity of lecturers in public tertiary institutions in Nigeria, while the TETFund budget for 2021 is N300 billion.

He told the new governing councils of the affected universities that their funds were withheld because of the internal crises and that TETFund is ready for immediate release of the funds for enhanced development of the institutions.

He said: “We at TETFund are ready for you and by extension; we are ready for the universities. This government places a premium on education. At TETFund, our budget last year was N220 billion and this year, it is N300 billion. That is why I said we are ready to impact on every aspect of tertiary education in Nigeria.

“I was just coming from an assessment tour of universities in Borno and Yobe states on ‘Academic Staff Training and Development.’ TETFund has expended from year 2018 to date the sum of N150 billion on the academic staff training alone.

“Our budget for universities this year is in the range of N1 billion each, all federal universities as well as state universities. This is in addition to several special intervention projects on ICTs, power among others,” he said.

Meanwhile, the executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Rasheed, in his remark at the event, said the commission was committed to the task of rapid revitalisation of university education in Nigeria through a number of carefully-spelt-out programmes.

He listed some of the steps taken to include curriculum re-engineering, review of accreditation and quality assurance instruments, developing governance code for private universities, promoting research and postgraduate development, fostering skills development and entrepreneurship and improving pedagogical skills of academics, among others.

Rasheed noted that the task before the governing councils was enormous and that the challenges were legendary, while appealing to them to “continue to support the collective efforts towards repositioning our universities to enable our institutions to drive Nigeria’s inevitable transition to a knowledge-based economy.”

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