The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) formerly Education Trust Fund (ETF) is a product of a challenge posed to ASUU by Government in the early 90s. Government then challenged ASUU to propose ‘other’ viable sources of generating funds that could be used to save tertiary education in the country through interventions and extra budgetary supports. ASUU worked out a detailed policy formulation and managerial structure of ETF (TETFund) which formed part of FGN/ASUU Agreement of 1992.
Although at its initial conception, the ETF intervention was intended to be a special intervention in Tertiary Education only, the Military government enlarged its scope to cover all levels of Education – Primary, Secondary and Higher Education. The intervention of the ETF did not make the intended significant changes in the education system at any level.
In 2011, the ETF Law was repealed. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (Establishment Act, etc.) Act was enacted as a transformative intervention agency for rehabilitation, restoration, and consolidation of the tertiary education in Nigeria While TETFund had been making visible impact in supporting tertiary education, we wish to draw the attention of the public, who are the real owners of the Fund, that recent subterranean attempts by government to make TETFund the main funding agency for Tertiary Education, rather than an intervention agency, will not be acceptable to ASUU.
This attempt had manifested itself in the manner in which the 12 new Federal Universities are being funded. The approach that government chose to adopt, in violation of the TETFund Act, had opened a floodgate of series of illegalities and fraud going on under the cover of funding the new universities. We list some of these below:
1. After the take-off grant of (N1.5b) was given to each of the 12 new Universities from TETFund another 2 billion Naira (from TETFund through the National Universities Commission, NUC) was allocated to each of them to finance the provision of “critical infrastructure in their permanent sites”. This is a clear affront to the TETFund act, as the fund is supposed to intervene in supporting existing tertiary institutions not establishing new ones. At any rate, we ask - since TETFund is for both State and Federal Universities, will the same gesture be extended to State Governments that will want to establish new universities?
Ever since their establishment, these Universities have received no funding from anywhere except TETFund. The only exception was another violation: the use of the University Stabilisation Fund to settle Personnel Cost of the new Universities.
2. Hostel Development Grant of N2bn was made to each of the 12 new Universities. None of these Universities has seen a kobo of this money. The money was given to NUC to administer. This is a gross violation of the TETFund Act as well as a violation of the subsisting operation procedure in the University System.
Monies meant for Universities are sent to Universities and not to regulatory agencies. NUC, as a regulatory agency, has no business collecting monies for Universities. Worse still, NUC is now serving as a Tenders Board for the Universities. NUC now awards contracts and sends contractors to the new Universities . This is illegal.
3. Over Inflation of Contracts. To put salt to injury, the contracts being awarded on behalf of these new Universities, by the NUC are ridiculously over-inflated. Take for instance the issue of students hostels, (N1.2 billion or thereabout of the N2billion is supposed to be for hostel project while the balance of N800 million or thereabout to be used for ICTcentre and administrative buildings), 140 rooms; 560 bed spaces (4 bed spaces per room) are being constructed in each of these 12 new Federal Universities by NUC at the cost of 1.2 billion naira.
This puts the cost of each bed space at 2.143 million naira and each room at 8.571 million naira. This is ridiculous and beyond imagination. And all these are done with TETFund money. Funds meant to support our decaying tertiary institution, are fraudulently being siphoned through over-inflated, misprioritised and illegal contracts, while the regular allocation to other institutions is thinning out.
4. Micro-teaching Laboratory Grant to Colleges of Education. This is similar fraud to the hostel development by NUC. N12billion was taken from TETFund in the name of micro-teaching laboratories. But none of the benefitting institutions received a thin dime. All the monies were allocated to the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), through the Ministry of Education. NCCE is another regulatory agency that is not supposed to be a beneficiary of TETFund grant.
A one-hall match-box structure that is supposed to be a multimedia-aided teaching laboratory is being constructed in each of the 58 Colleges of Education (COEs) at the cost of 200 million naira each! NCCE has also transformed itself into a Tenders Board for COEs and awarding contracts on behalf of the colleges and spending TETFund intervention that is supposed to go directly to the colleges.
While the project of providing the micro-teaching laboratories to COEs is a relevant one, the process is in crass violation of the TETFund Act. The inflation of the contract is ridiculously fraudulent.
5. First Class Scholarship Grant. The use of over One billion naira from TETfund and PTDF (with over 600million naira taken from TETFund) to sponsor First Class Graduates who are not staff of tertiary institutions to study in foreign universities. This, again, violates Section 7 of the TETFund Act. The second reason is that the monies are also sent to a regulatory agency, the NUC, to administer (even when there is a federal scholarship office in the Ministry of Education).
It is imperative to call on the Ministry of Education, the Board of TETFund and the management of TETFund to respect the Act of the Fund. Every operation and transaction must be guided, strictly, by the provisions of the Act.
ASUU will not fold its arms and watch as some opportunistic bureaucrats and politicians take advantage of the absence of a Board or substantive Executive Secretary for the Fund to desecrate and bastardise the Fund. ASUU will never allow anyone to reverse the little gains made since the end of the infamous era of-impunity in the ETF in the Obasanjo era. We will never allow TETFund to be destroyed. Subsequently, we wish to call on the Federal Government to
i. Immediately halt the fraud going on at TETFund, Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission, investigate the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
ii. Direct the Board to ensure that all monies meant for Universities and other Tertiary Institutions are released to the Institutions, and not to regulatory agencies.
iii. Direct the Board to ensure that the 2013 TETFund budget allocations, approved over six months ago, be implemented as approved.
iv. Ensure that TETFund commences the release of the 2013 Regular and Special interventions to all benefitting institutions. And this must not be mixed-up with the SOS intervention arising from the implementation of the 2009 ASUU/FGN Agreement
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