The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, on Monday, said that virtually all government owned tertiary institutions in the country were surviving based on assistance from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND).
He disclosed this while delivering a paper on “Baseline and Assessment: Improving Access, Quality and Equity In Tertiary Education in Ogun State”, at a two-day Education Summit, organised by the State Government, held in Abeokuta, the state capital.
The theme of the summit is ‘Affordable Qualitative Education: Pursuit of Excellence’.
Oloyede noted that if there was no steady fund from TETFUND, students in nation’s public institutions would have been subjected to payment of services provided by it, and that many would not have been able to afford tuition fees that would have been charged.
He said that six institutions in the state benefitted from a total of N4,760,198.00 2016 allocation TETFUND intervention.
Oloyede hinted that public institutions in the state were not taking advantage of research fund as provided by TETFUND for educational advancement, noting that the state had the highest number of tertiary institutions in the country.
Oloyede also disclosed that over N1billion was disbursed for national research between 2013 and 2016 and that only Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED) benefitted from it.
“We are not here to just celebrate what we have achieved. We are here to tell ourselves the truth. I believe institutions in Ogun State need to do more, in terms of drawing fund for research from TETFUND,” he added.
He called for the establishment of Education Trust Fund to assist indigent students in order to make education affordable and also the establishment of Tertiary Admission Monitoring Committee to monitor the applications and admissions of state indigenes to tertiary institutions.
Oloyede urged the federal government to implement the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) Act to deal with quackery in the teaching profession.
Also speaking, a Senior Lecturer, Lagos Business School, Dr. Doyin Salami, advised the state government to collaborate with other stakeholders in the sector in developing education.
He lamented the performance of the state in the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) and advised government to work on it.
Salami who spoke on ‘Funding vs Results: A Critical Look’, said the state government must find alternative way of funding education going by the population of school age children which kept on increasing over years.
Governor Ibikunle Amosun while delivering the summit open, appealed to parents to instil the right discipline and moral in their children.
He noted that the problem of cultism which had become more rampant among pupils and students calls for concern.
“Our parents also need to rise up to the challenge of nation building by intensifying their efforts in raising our children.”
“We must find a formula to address the challenge of cultism, because if we fail to do it, it will consume all of us,” he said.