In March this year, the executive secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Professor Elias Suleiman Bogoro said Nigerian researchers had no cause to be poor because the agency would pay more attention to research and development in nation’s higher institutions of learning. UJI ABDULLAHI ILIYSAU reports that the temptation of pecuniary benefits the Fund presents may be the bane of his lofty ideas.
Background
TETFund is mandated to keep and manage the money realised from the two per cent tax on company profits for use by tertiary institutions of learning in the country. The main areas of TETFund’s mandate are the provision of physical infrastructure for teaching and learning, instructional material and equipment, research and publication as well as academic staff training and development. But as in most Nigerian system, the agency seems to have abandoned the core mandate of research and development to providing physical infrastructure in higher schools because it is the area where money can be siphoned undetected through kick-backs from contractors, critics said.
The executive secretary of TETFund, Professor Bogoro said that very soon researchers in Nigerian tertiary institutions would have no cause to remain poor.
He stated this in his speech during the inauguration of ad-hoc committee on Research and Development (R&D) of TETFund in March this year.
Bogoro said innovative research and its consequent commercialisation is the driver that moves and nurtures the engine of modern economic growth, thus it is an important driver of poverty alleviation.
“The key measurement parameters for Nigerian Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), the anchor for Nigeria’s economic transformation blueprint is dependent on Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) . The advancement in SET is dependent on R&D.
“Innovative research and its consequent commercialisation is the driver that moves and nurtures the engine of modern economic growth, thus it is an important driver of poverty alleviation.
“There is ample evidence to show that R&D propelled by higher education, more than anything else, has contributed to the rise and expansion of the world knowledge economy.” Bogoro said.
Bogoro’s move was not unconnected to the fact that when he was reinstated as the TETFund boss and resumed official duty, he found that the level of research in higher schools was remarkably low.
“In spite of the fact that the role of research and development (R&D) in national development, including leveraging the quality of research and academic programmes is well known, the level of research and development infrastructure and productivity in Nigeria remains unacceptably low (0.02 per cent),” he said.
He averred that in spite of the fact that R&D is central to a country’s development, in Nigeria, there is absence of a national platform for the regulation and strengthening of research and development.
“It is in this vein that TETFund, propelled by my vision, continues to advocate the establishment by law, of a national R&D Foundation that will ensure a coordinated national framework for the sustenance and implementation of R&D.
“Such a foundation, when established, shall promote an effective interface between universities, government and private sector, especially the industrial subsector of the economy.”
The committee Bogoro hurriedly installed has Professor Placid Njoku, an erudite scholar and one of Africa’s most prominent intellectual and academics and current president of Nigerian Institute of Animal Science as chairman; Professor Ibrahim Katampe, a professor of Chemistry and director for Innovative and Technology Incubation in the Center for Excellence in Emerging Technologies (CEET) , Central State University, USA, as vice chairman, and Mr Temitope Toogun, head of human capital commission of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) as member. Other members include prominent TETFund staff.
All three have promised to take TETFund R&D assignment with all seriousness for the good of Nigeria, but stakeholders are worried that the committee might become a conduit pipe to the agency’s fund.
Responsibility abandoned
Recently the agency has turned its back on its core mandate which is research.
Nigerian academics and stakeholders in education had severally accused TETFund management of essentially enriching foreign universities at the detriment of their counterparts at home; instead of investing in higher education in Nigeria, TETFund seems to be more concerned with sending staff to universities abroad, the reason many stakeholders said is due to pecuniary gains officials of the Fund derive from the foreign training.
TETFund, because of the its huge annual budget, and its hidden expenditures, has become a public agency, which is more sought after by men of questionable characters. It is a goldmine to fraudulent officials in its office and higher schools as well as contractors.
Kickbacks at TETfund
The foremer TETFund boss, Dr Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, who was sacked last year by President Muhammadu Buhari without explanation, once said in a press conference that when he was appointed executive secretary in August 2016, the agency was marked by corruption.
“When we came, the house was almost upside down, because the primary purpose of establishing the agency, which is to intervene in specific areas regarding investments and financing, was relegated to the background.
“The annual direct disbursement for the year 2015’s allocation was only 20 per cent of the total allocation for that year, while special intervention, which is discretional, was 80 per cent of the allocation for that year.
“That is a recipe for corruption; that is a recipe for impunity; that is a recipe for fraud,” he said.
But this man was removed from office because he refused to acquiesce to corruption. He accused former education minister, Malam Adamu Adamu for asking for bribe from him which he refused. The consequence was his sudden sack from office.
“The minister sent someone to my office. He said I distributed over N200billion to tertiary institutions without remitting the 10 per cent kickback, which amounted to N20 billion.”
Towards the end of 2018, Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, the sacked Executive Secretary of TETFund, said he was sacked from his position as head of TETFund because he failed to remit kickbacks to the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu.
Speaking to BBC Hausa in an interview, Baffa revealed that his sack was ill-motivated by the Education Minister who gave unfounded excuses against him.
“The Minister sent someone to my office. He said I distributed over N200billion to tertiary institutions without remitting the 10 per cent kickback, which amounted to N20 billion,” Baffa said.
“If they bring any evidence indicting me, I’m ready to accept death punishment,”he added.
The sacked boss was replaced by Suleiman Elias Bogoro, who was TETFund boss between 2014 and 2016. Bogoro was also sacked from office in 2016.
Academic training abused
The agency’s academic staff training and development programme were being routinely violated.
Selected beneficiary scholars who were given money to pursue their studies abroad spend the money on luxuries at home.
Many scholars argue that the fund is in the habit of spending the taxpayers’ money to enrich and strengthen universities abroad, while the home universities suffer porosity of fund to run their programmes effectively.
A lecturer at the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Dr Celestine Aguoru, once told University World News that the fund was enriching universities “outside the shores of Nigeria to the detriment of universities in Nigeria.
“If we dedicated the amount of money committed to foreign training for academic and non-academic staff of universities every year, to one university each year, we would have state of the art research facilities in Nigerian universities that foreign researchers would visit. But TETFund prefers to send the money to foreign universities for training rather than spend it in Nigeria,” he said.
This habit discourages internal development of national institutions of learning. How can they grow when the major source of funding prefers to give it to some other universities outside?
At TETFund, more funds were allocated to staff who are selected as monitors of the students in overseas than the money spent on those sent on training itself. Thus, it is clear why TETFund officials prefer staff training abroad.
Grants misused
In September 2018 it was reported that the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission had recovered a N7.5m grant misspent by 11 lecturers of the Kaduna State Polytechnic.
The grant was given by the Fund to the polytechnic between 2010 and 2017 for “staff capacity development through local and international training.”
The ICPC said the lecturers received the grant but failed to attend the training, which held in Nigeria, the United States of America, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates.
The commission’s spokesperson, Rasheedat Okoduwa, said the ICPC, through its North-West Zonal office, investigated the TETFUND grant and reported that the money was not utilised for the intended purpose.
The ICPC acting Chairman, Dr Musa Abubakar, who handed over the recovered grant to the bursar of the institution, Mr Garba Nabayi, said the commission would ensure that tertiary institutions in the country did not misuse TETFUND and other grants.
“This investigation of the utilisation of TETFUND grants is being carried out in 27 other tertiary institutions in the North-West geopolitical zone of the country to make sure that all grants were properly used. Anyone found wanting for the misuse of the grant will be prosecuted.
“Carting away public funds is one of the things we are fighting. Non-utilisation of the fund given to lecturers is a crime and lecturers as role models are to show good behavioural conduct to their students. Beneficiaries of such grant must ensure they go for the training because ICPC will not only recover such funds but will prosecute anybody found culpable.”
All said and done, Nigeria has not heard of any of its academics prosecuted for misusing TETFund grant.
TETFund misguided
A professor of English at the Bayero University Kano (BUK), Ibrahim Bello-Kano, has said recently that the Nigerian university system has collapsed beyond redemption.
He said Nigerian universities have degenerated into ‘Super Secondary Schools’ and there is no hope for recovery.
The don spoke at a round table organised by the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in Kano, with the theme, “Reviving the culture of debate and critical thinking in the Nigerian university system”.
The reasons the don adduced include poor quality of students entering the university, lack of diversity in the academic staff, poor quality of university administrators, as well as dubious processes of recruitment and promotion of lecturers.
“Nigerian universities have declined irretrievably and will never be better than they are now,” he said.
The professor lamented that Nigerian lecturers have become mere civil servants with a teaching function rather than academics pursuing knowledge.
