The Tertiary Education Trust Fund(TETFund) has claimed that an excessive amount of money has been spent on about 1,500 Nigerian students studying outside the country.
The Executive Secretary of the agency, Sonny Echono, came out and made this claim during a visit made by members of the House of Representatives committee on the Tertiary Education Trust Fund to the agency on Thursday.
His supporting claim rests on the exchange rate of the naira. According to him, the decline of the naira in the market has caused several challenges to arise for scholars being sponsored by the TETFund program.
This has caused the majority of said students to demand more funding as the issue is causing a decline in the number of beneficiaries under the agency’s umbrella.
Some of the institutions housing these individuals have reached out to the agency, expressing their concerns revolving around the payment processes.
Sonny Echono stated that as part of the intervention, the fees in question will be paid directly to the institutions by the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) in bulk for these scholars.
“We have taken care of 1500 scholars with a total of N3.8 billion expended. We identify a cut-off point for those who will be eligible for the scholarship,” he had stated.
Beneficiary institutions were also reminded to have domiciliary accounts created beforehand to enable the easy allocation of funds.
However, some criteria must be met to become eligible for the scholarship:
- The individual must be a full-time Nigerian Academic staff and must be working at and nominated for a scholarship by the beneficiary institution.
- The individual must have acquired admission for full-time study in any university that is ahead of the best Nigerian universities at the time.
- The individual must be applying for only their first Masters or Doctorate. Candidate must not receive any other scholarships.
- The individual must provide adequate evidence of physical medical fitness from a public hospital.
While some of these scholarships do last for a year or two, a handful happen to go on for up to four years, especially for Doctorate candidates.
The representative of the Agency went ahead to state various projects being handled by the agency that are beginning to have a positive impact on the nation.
Alongside the provision of funding support for 5,525 infrastructural projects, he commended the agency on being able to attract foreign grants for cutting-edge research. Sonny Echono said that through the efforts of the agency, Nigeria has climbed from 9th to 7th on the list of African countries attracting the highest research grants.
He also said that although the collection from Education tax dropped significantly in 2021, there has been a 2.5 to 3 per cent rise in subsequent years, resulting in a steady climb of collection in 2022 and 2023.
Miriam Onuoha, Chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education Trust Fund was impressed with these data and commended Echono on the positive outcome of the majority of the agency’s projects and on how well he has handled the affairs of the agency, alongside keeping track of the mandate of TETFund.
She however showed significant concern for situations where funding for Tertiary institutions cannot be readily accessed by those in need of it. She urged both Federal and State governments to ensure that Tertiary institutions under their jurisdictions work hand in hand with TETFund to access their funding.
Onuoha said structures were being put in place to ensure that in function with the committee on TETFund, allocations of funds are used properly.
