At  TETFUND, the Goal is to Rescue Nigeria’s Tertiary Institutions Despite All Odds

Tajudeen Kareem

Since the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came into office nearly a year ago, there have been several attempts to disrupt the flow of governance as well as the laid-out policies of the young administration. Some of the tactics adopted include deliberate targeting and demonization of key functionaries of the government, perhaps to put them on their toes.

Over the past few months, several key figures appeared to have been selected as objects for a campaign of calumny – ironically by using the Tinubu government’s stated aversion to corruption to malign these officials. It is in this wise that the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, Arc Sonny T. Echono, could be said to have found himself among the select few.

Recently, there has been a flurry of reports alleging that the leadership of the TETFund awarded ‘questionable contracts’ amounting to the tune of N7.6 billion. The agency, it is alleged, usurped the powers of President Tinubu and the Federal Executive Council in doing this, and that the Fund acted outside its mandate in carrying out capacity building programmes in its beneficiary institutions.

One of the stated policy goals of the Tinubu administration is an overhaul of Nigeria’s education system to make it more inclusive as well as responsive to global realities. One of the cardinal pillars of this policy is tertiary education, which had suffered greatly in the recent past from poor infrastructure, poor funding and demotivated staff. 

One of the key agencies of government towards awards achieving this transformation of the tertiary education sector is TETFund and this agency has performed creditably – especially since Arc Echono, an experienced technocrat, took over as the Executive Secretary.

One of his early decisions was a reform of the procurement process to make it smoother, eliminate corruption, reduce delivery time of projects, prevent cost escalation and improve general efficiency in the discharge of the Fund’s mandate.

As part of the reform process, all projects to be executed by the Fund are planned, packaged and selected by the beneficiary institutions for review and concurrence of the Fund. It also ensures that there are no more TETFund or vendor-promoted projects, as the needs of the institutions shall prevail.

For the umpteenth time, TETFund, has clarified that part of the reforms it carried out was to eliminate the use of vendors and contractors in its academic and professional staff training interventions. Contracts are no longer used for its content-based interventions except in infrastructural projects where the procurement of goods, tools, laboratory equipment and others are needed.

On the sidelines of the 2nd Registrars’ Workshop and 75th Business Meeting of the Association of Registrars of Nigerian Universities, recently in Abuja, Echono emphasised that the fund has been leveraging on Memoranda of Understanding to carry out its academic and professional staff training since 2016.

“We do not use contracts. We have eliminated the use of vendors for academic and professional training. We sponsor people for postdoc, for bench work, or even academic degrees: masters and PhDs, and for professional proficiencies and certification in ICT that will improve employability.

“So, when detractors try to say things like these, they’re calling it contracts, because they are trying to criminalise when they knew for example, that contracts you cannot pay more than 30% as advanced payments.

“We have removed all middlemen; people are not happy but I am sorry, that is the job I was asked to come and do. We have removed the wheeling and dealing and have been able to restore the image of our institutions, and we are proud of that achievement,” he said.

On the procurement of blackboards, Echono said the fund had MoU with an American company which made the purchase of the boards cheaper, adding that individual institutions wrote TETFund asking to participate in the project and agreed to the terms of payment.

The Echono management has also gone into partnership with both local and foreign educational authorities and stakeholders to improve the general standard of tertiary education in the country. 

Last year, President Tinubu lauded the agency for its foresightedness and dedication to service delivery. The president gave the commendation during the commissioning of projects funded by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund in public tertiary educational institutions in the country.

The President, who was represented by members of his cabinet and other top government functionaries at the different beneficiary institutions across the country, expressed delight at the various projects which he said would further enhance teaching and learning and improve academic standards in the institutions.

President Tinubu assured that his administration would continue to provide necessary support towards making Nigerian educational institutions globally competitive for economic and technological development of the country.

Similarly, the National Assembly under the leadership of the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abbas has stated that it would continue to provide necessary support to TETFund through the enactment of legislations that would further advance tertiary education in Nigeria.

The commissioned projects include those at the University of lbadan and The Polytechnic Ibadan, worth over N650million and N1billion respectively. 

The projects are the Department of Architecture building, Faculty of Technology Building at the University of lbadan, and Faculty of Business and Communication Studies Building, Faculty of Financial Management Studies Building and Faculty of Science Building at The Polytechnic, Ibadan.

In Gombe State, 11 projects valued at over N4.5 billion were commissioned by the Minister of Transportation, Alhaji Saïdu Alkali at Gombe State University. At the Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi commissioned three projects worth over N1.5 billion. 

The Kwara State University, Malete, was beneficiary of three commissioned projects, namely the Senate Building, the College of Engineering Workshop Extension and the Centre for Sustainable Energy Building.

Similarly, projects worth N873.6 million were commissioned at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University and Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic in Bauchi State; while an array of projects worth N2billion were inaugurated at the Federal University of   Technology, Abeokuta and Tai Solarin College of Education.

The raft of support to tertiary education by the Echono leadership was also recognized by the leadership of the 10th Assembly who also participated in the inauguration exercise. The lawmakers expressed excitement that since the enactment of the TETFund Act in 2011, the Fund has performed exceptionally in the provision of physical infrastructure, support for academic staff training and development, book publication, ICT, Research and Development amongst others in public tertiary educational institutions across the country.

Beyond improving infrastructure at various educational institutions across the country, Arc Echono-led TETFund is also taking steps to help fresh graduates secure jobs as a way to address mass youth unemployment in the country. This the agency is doing by implementing the recommendations from its Graduate Employability Benchmark programme conducted in partnership with the International Finance Corporation, IFC, to reduce unemployment rate in Nigeria.

This was motivated by the report of the IFC on Nigerian educational institutions, which indicated that the aggregate average score of Nigerian benchmark institutions across the five dimensions of employability namely relevance of learning, governance and strategy, employer engagement, career services/guidance, and alumni management stood at 2.3 out of 4.0. This is a little above 2.2 which represents the average of institutions benchmarked globally.

Indeed, the agency was deliberately refocusing its intervention activities to support learning outcomes and employability of Nigerian graduates. The new approach came on the heels of an approval by the Federal Ministry of Education of  a strategic and operational plan to refocus TETFund entrepreneurship intervention for employability and innovation.

With his innovative and result oriented leadership, it is not surprising that various stakeholders in the education sector have spoken warmly about the transformational activities of TETFund under Arc. Echono.

In a recent statement affirming its support for TETFund and its management, the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, commended   TETFund for being a “driving force” behind the advancement of higher education in the country. NANS President, Peter Obi said the leadership of Echono has marked significant strides in addressing the pressing infrastructure needs of academic institutions.

“From modernizing facilities to enhancing research capabilities, TETFund has been a driving force behind the advancement of higher education in our nation. It is evident that without the crucial support provided by TETFund, our tertiary institutions would be left vulnerable and ill-equipped to meet the demands of contemporary education.

“Take away TETFund, and our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education will go naked, deprived of the essential resources needed to thrive in an increasingly competitive global landscape,” Obi said.

National Coordinator, Nigerian Anti-Corruption Defenders, Leonard Musa has also commended the exemplary performance and technical support provided by TETFund to all the Universities across the country which has facilitated conducive academic activities.

“Drawing from his extensive experience as a former Permanent Secretary in the  Federal Civil Service, the Executive Secretary has doubled his efforts in transforming TETFund into a beacon of excellence in tertiary education funding,” NACD said.

TETFund, Musa said, has been driving educational reforms across tertiary institutions in Nigeria and has returned sanity to the sector.  

Echono’s detractors might want to reflect on an old wise saying: “It is not in the nature of worms to teach eagles how to fly.’’ Though the dogs might continue to bark, it would not stop the caravan from moving on to its destination.

The managers of TETFUND are experienced, focused and dedicated to making a positive impact on their mandate. They are already making remarkable impacts and no amount of skullduggery by faceless charlatans would make them deviate from this mission to rescue Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

*Kareem, a public policy analyst writes from Abuja.