By Martin Paul
Abuja
Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), has disclosed that N213, 418,124,493.75 was earmarked for disbursement to tertiary institutions the 2016 budget allocation.
Executive Secretary of the Fund, Dr. Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, in a document presented to the management team of Blueprint Newspapers, who paid a courtesy call in his office, said there was an increase compared to what was allocated in 2015.
Bichi said annual direct disbursements to the three tier tertiary institutions, would gulp N149, 392, 687, 145.63, while high impact phase v1 stood at N30, 000,000,000.63.
Baffa, in the document, said zonal interventions was N12billion, while stabilsation fund was N10, 670, 906,224.69 just as N5, 400, 000, 000 was approved for designated project and N1billion slated for National Research Fund.
He disclosed that each of 40 federal universities and 34 state
universities would received N1, 009, 410, 000, while the 54 public polytechnic would be given N691,632, 000 and a disbursement of N679, 057,000 would be disbursed to 55 public colleges of education.
“While the 2016 allocation to beneficiary institutions is almost three times the allocation given to them in 2015, a deeper look into individual intervention lines shows that the Fund is determined” to do more.
The Fund, according to Baffa would accelerate the training and support of scholars in tertiary institutions in the country to pursue and acquire doctorate degree.
It would also accelerate the process of bridging the teaching and learning infrastructure gap in all beneficiary institution and continue to support cutting edge research and innovation.
“That is why academic staff training and development is allocated N320 million for universities, N200 million for each polytechnic and colleges of education.
“This is against the N1oomillion, N70 million and N60 million allocated to universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, respectively, in the 2015 budget.
“In 2015, while programme upgrade was allocated N565.41 million for universities, N380,632 million for polytechnics and N371.06 million for colleges of education as against as against N1000 million, N70 million and N72 million, respectively in 2015.”
