In a bid to foster excellence in the nation’s tertiary education system, the Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, has announced that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) will defund any non-performing Centre of Excellence it established eight years ago.
The minister made this known in Abuja on Friday while receiving two reports of TETFund’s ad hoc committees on Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence and Operationalisation of Skills Development Special Intervention.
“The government is encouraging our scholars to simply rise to the occasion and deliver on their scholarship, what world class scholars do; and we are not going to reward indolence. We can’t be giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do,” Mamman said while receiving reports from TETFund’s ad hoc committees.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc Sonny Echono, echoed the minister’s sentiments, stating that the fund will not continue to “throw money away to centres that are not living up to expectations.”
Echono revealed that some centres have had funds with TETFund that they have not accessed since inception, indicating a lack of progress.
The report by the Committee on the Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence, led by Prof Oyewale Tomori, advised TETFund to provide some “bail out funds” to the centres to enable their proper take-off, as most had not utilized their initial seed grant of N150 million.
The committee also recommended that TETFund ensure all funds for the Centres of Excellence are disbursed directly to their accounts and that the centre directors be on full-time assignment to achieve the set objectives.
Also, the Advisory Committee on Operationalisation of TETFund Skills Development Special Intervention, chaired by Dr. Nuru Yakubu, recommended the designation of specific polytechnics across the geopolitical zones to benefit from the special intervention in 2024 and 2025.
