TETFUND and the quest for world class Nigerian varsities

The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND, Professor Suleiman Bogoro, at a recent event in Abuja, unveiled a quest by the agency to see to the realization of world class Nigerian universities. AUGUSTINE OKEZIE examines this statement as it concerns tertiary education in Nigeria

 

Speaking, while receiving the award conferred on TETFUND by the Independent Service Delivery Monitoring Group (ISMG), Professor Bogoro vowed to ensure that its intervention in the tertiary education sector would in a few years time lift Nigerian Universities to be amongst the top 50 in the world.
The Executive Secretary further noted that since the year 2011 when the Education Trust Fund (ETF) Act was repealed and replaced by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act, the level of intervention which has seen the provision of over 30,000 educational infrastructural projects in all the tertiary institutions in the country was in tremendous support by government to enable Nigerian universities attain the feat soonest.
The ISDMG in naming TETFUND as the most outstanding public institution said it explored the benefits of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, to scrutinize over 400 public institutions on their service delivery process. After a very competitive voting exercise, which generated thousands of votes via SMS, e-mail and questionnaires, where Nigerians unanimously endorsed TETFUND.

At the unveiling of Service Delivery Report and Award Ceremony in Abuja, the Executive Director, ISDMG, Chima Amadi explained that the award was in recognition of the revolutionary intervention activities TETFUND has played and still plays in the fight to restore the lost glory of the Nigerian educational system.
He said: “These organizations have shown that the Nigerian spirit when properly kindled becomes insurmountable. It has proved that the panacea for our under-development lies within us as a people”.
Amadi stated that the group has been assisting the government and the citizens of Nigeria in ensuring that effective services are rendered by government institutions especially those that have been mandated with specific statutory functions.
Commenting on the award also, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of TETFUND, Musa Babayo, stated that the fund has invested over N27 billion in the Nigerian educational sector.
He described TETFUND as “one of Nigeria’s export brands adding that Ghana and some other African countries were already copying the agency’s intervention program in their educational system

Recalling the establishment of the award ceremony, designed to audit the quality of service rendered by public institutions, Mr. Amadi said It was in 2004 when a constellation of civil society organizations (CSOS) gathered in a nondescript conference Room of one of the hotels in Abuja, undertook critical analysis of the government’s decision to have what it called a service compact with Nigerians, that the thought to institute such an event arose.
He said ‘’In a nation with serious vertical trust deficits, what are   the moral implications of the government rating itself as envisaged in the practical implementation of the service compact with Nigerians? In the event that a component of that organ of government falls short of efficient service delivery, is there enough political will to publicly indict the culpable agency by the same arm?’’

He further noted that the maiden edition received strong support by institutional partners, News, rated 42 organizations out of which 14 emerged as winners with just fewer than fifteen. Thousand Nigerians voting, signposting what is to today, the most credible and most widely anticipated awards and ratings for public institutions?
Blueprint gathered that in this year’s contest, over 400 public institutions were involved in a process that commenced about four months ago when the first of   freedom of information Requests first went out; out of this number, it was further pruned and following seven days of intensive voting by Nigerians on various platforms, an exercise that witnessed unprecedented voting numbers, the best were selected by Nigerians.

The findings by the panelists that selected these institutions revealed that they showed ‘’the Nigerian spirit which when properly kindled is insurmountable; proving the panacea to our under development as a people; fore grounding the belief that our nation is not in lack of the human capital necessary to lift her out of the doldrums’’.
The quest to establish world class Nigerian varsities though laudable requires the complimentary role of relevant stakeholders for it to succeed. A situation where most tertiary institutions are still grappling with accessing funds already released to them for infrastructural development, does not help in any way in the realization of the TETFUND dream.
It is only when the management of these universities begin to rise to selfless pursuit of the development of their respective universities that the raking of our universities in the international scene will improve.