Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), said it will provide not less than 200,000 bed spaces for students in various tertiary institutions across Nigeria.
Chairman, TETFund Board of Trustees, (BoT) Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, disclosed this in Abuja at agency 2020 Board Retreat for Research Grants, with the theme, “Consolidating TETFund as a Model Intervention Agency for Nigeria’s Knowledge Economy”.
Ibrahim-Imam said the board was concerned with the issues of lack of adequate accommodation spaces and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in different tertiary institutions in the country.
“I am very particular about two critical areas, which is also of great concern to me and the BoT.
“These include the issue of accommodation and ICT, in spite of various interventions by TETFund, our tertiary institutions still have inadequate lecture theatres, research laboratories, hostels and ICT facilities.
“In the area of accommodation, it is a known fact that the number of bed spaces in our tertiary institutions is only 10 to 15 per cent of the student population.
“For example, the University of Abuja has 1000 bed spaces for 30,000 students. Also, University of Calabar has 2000 bed spaces for 55,000 students. These amount to 3.3 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively.
“So, in the course of my tenure, I will ensure that we encourage the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to go into public private partnership arrangement that at the end of the day, they will sign agreement that will transfer the ownership of the campuses from the private developer to the universities authorities,” he said.
The chairman said that TETFund planned to wire up all the tertiary institutions with ICT that would facilitate e-learning.
“If these were desirable or luxury before, then it has become essential due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we hope that this will encourage e-learning, e-libraries and if possible conduct e-examinations, as you cannot have meaningful researches anywhere, if you cannot log on to the internet.”
In his remark, Executive Secretary of TETFund, Professor Elias Suleiman Bogoro, said that the Fund recently established 12 centres of excellence, among others, within the country to promote research in various tertiary institutions across the country.
He added that two universities in each geo-political zones were selected and the agency was working on having additional centres in other universities in 2021, while polytechnics and colleges of education will have theirs in 2022.
