THE Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) says it will commence the construction of its North-Central zonal office in Nasarawa State, in January 2023.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, made this known during a courtesy visit to the Fund by Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State in Abuja.
Echono, who expressed delight over the tremendous impact of TETFund intervention projects in tertiary education institutions in Nasarawa State, said that the zonal office would bring beneficiary institutions in the North-central region closer to the Fund.
He expressed appreciation to the governor for allocating land for the construction of the North-central zonal office.
“Your Excellency graciously approved and allocated a piece of land to us as the North-Central zone office. We plan to commence construction in January 2023. It will afford us the opportunity to get closer to the beneficiaries of our intervention projects,” Echono said.
While expressing readiness of TETFund to reposition public tertiary education institutions for better performance, Echono lauded President Muhammadu Buhari for his massive support for the Fund, which had seen an upward review of education tax to two and half percent.
“We also express our profound appreciation to the President for the wonderful support he has been giving to TETFund. With effect from this year, TETFund now gets two and a half percent not two percent as the education tax, and the President has assured us that before the end of his administration, it would have moved to three percent,” Echono said.
Earlier, the governor, who lavished praise on TETFund for the various intervention projects in Nasarawa State University and other public tertiary institutions in his state, commended Echono and his predecessor, Professor Suleiman Bogoro, for ensuring that the university benefited from high impact projects and other regular interventions.
“After my assumption of office as the governor, I visited and I told TETFUND that I wanted to introduce the faculties of Engineering and Medicine at the Nasarawa State University, but we didn’t have the money. We got the approval and we were able to set up the faculties. So, I thank the management of TETFund for the support we received.
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“Secondly, we looked at the courses we are running at the Nasarawa Polytechnic, now Mustapha Agwai Polytechnic, and we discovered that we did not have a single accredited technical course in the polytechnic. So, I called for assistance from TETFund and today we have four technical courses,” the governor said.
While saying that Nasarawa State still wants more from TETFund in order to meet the developmental needs of the state, Governor Sule expressed the wish that education tax would be reviewed to four percent to ensure more robust performance from the Fund.
He, however, expressed satisfaction with President Buhari’s move on ensuring increment of the education tax to three percent by next year.
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