Tetfund: Why We’re Setting up Publishing Centres in 6 Geopolitical Zones

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (Tetfund) says it embarked on the establishment of Academic Publishing Centres in each of the six geopolitical zones of the country to effectively address the challenge of scarcity of indigenously authored and produced tertiary level books and related academic publications in Nigeria’s tertiary educational institutions.

The agency also said it had invested the sum of N5 billion in the project in line with its mandate and desires to improve teaching, learning and research.

These were made known by the Chairman, Tetfund Board of Trustees (BoT), Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, during the meeting between the agency and managements of public universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in the North East zone held at the Modibbo Adama University of Technology (MAUTECH), Yola, to deliberate on successful take-off of the North East’s regional Academic Publishing Centre domiciled in the University.

Ibrahim-Imam, who informed the heads of public tertiary educational institutions, who converged on MAUTECH from Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, and Borno states that the printing machines would be supplied in a couple of weeks for the imminent take-off of the North East centre, stressed Tetfund’s commitment to collaborative approach to interventions, hence the crucial meeting with the beneficiary institutions to deliberate on the best ways to operate, manage, and sustain the Centre.

On his part, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, emphasised the need to boost local capacity in the production of tertiary level textbooks and related academic publications in the country.

“It is expected that nurturing the culture of quality authorship and production of indigenous books will not only ensure the availability of relevant books in the diverse subject areas that take cognisance of our local environment and sensibilities, it will also safeguard our national pride,” Prof. Bogoro said.

Also speaking, the Vice Chancellor, the Nigerian Army University, Biu, Borno State, Prof. Haruna Kyari, while joining other heads of institutions to commend Tetfund for outstanding interventions, called on all levels of government to prioritise education, adding that but for Tetfund, many tertiary educational institutions would have since gone moribund.

Prof. Kyari observed that whereas Tetfund was supposed to be an intervention agency, it appeared many state governments had abandoned the funding and development of their respective tertiary institutions to Tetfund.