We can’t build peace, security without education —TETFund boss

THE Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Dr Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, has insisted that education must be provided for the people in order to build peace and security in the country.

He added that there was the urgent need to expand the carrying capacity of the nation’s universities and other tertiary institutions so as to accommodate more candidates who sought admissions on annual basis in vain because of the low carrying capacity of the existing institutions.

He made the assertion while addressing members of Education Correspondents Association of Nigeria (ECAN) at their quarterly congress in Abuja.

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Baffa said it was unfortunate that about 80 per cent of candidates seeking admissions to study in universities in the country were unable to secure placement, saying expanding the capacity of the institutions would accommodate more intake and create hope for the teeming youth in the country.

He said TETFund, under his watch, had emphasised this to all the beneficiary institutions of the agency’s intervention, explaining that this informed the decision of the Fund to stop construction of “match box” structures with their allocations for physical development projects.

He said he was glad that the landscape of the institutions were gradually changing, because most of them now build massive structures in compliance with the directive of the TETFund management.

He said: “majority of the beneficiary institutions are complying with the law. We ensure value for money and TETFund projects are growing all over the country with the intervention projects overwhelming the existing structures in most of the institutions”.

He said in order to address the challenge of teaching staff, over 22,000 scholars had been trained for their masters and and doctorate degree programmes both within Nigeria and abroad. He maintained that over 90 per cent of this number was sponsored by the current administration in the last three years.