Three years ago when Arc. Sonny Echono assumed leadership of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), he set an unmistakable tone – focused delivery, strategic engagement and measurable impact. By late 2025, the results were tangible. What was once a routine grants-and-infrastructure agency has evolved into a proactive, planning-driven engine that prioritizes institutional strengthening, human-capital development and accountable project implementation.This review celebrates the clarity of vision and the visible outcomes that marks Echono’s stewardship, stressing how incremental reforms have translated into better-equipped classrooms, more skilled academic staff and a fund increasingly aligned with national development needs.
A standout feature of the Echono era is the evident shift toward forward planning and stakeholder consultation. In early 2025, TETFund convened strategic workshops with heads of beneficiary institutions to discuss the year’s disbursement guidelines, an approach that signals transparency and shared ownership of priorities.
Stakeholders are unanimous that these engagements reduced surprises for universities, polytechnics and Colleges of Education, aligned expectations and help institutions plan capital projects and training programmes more effectively. The consistent publication of guidelines and intervention allocations on TETFund’s official channels was described as a welcome development by pundits.
TETFund’s 2025 intervention allocations also reflected a coherent prioritisation of needs. Compared with previous cycles, the Fund increased funding lines for physical infrastructure and academic staff development; clear signals that Echono intends to repair the broken bones of campus infrastructure as well as invest in human capacity.
For intance, allocations for physical infrastructure rose sharply in the 2024–2025 planning while budget lines for academic staff training, ICT support and library development were bolstered – practical, multiplier interventions that enhance teaching, research and student experience simultaneously.
In the same vein, Echono’s public-facing leadership has helped rebrand TETFund from a bureaucratic allocator into a thought partner for tertiary education. His frequent speeches and appearances at convocations, workshops or project commissioning emphasised employability, digital readiness and research commercialisation.
This narrative shift nudges beneficiary institutions towards outcomes that matter for the economy: graduate employability, locally relevant research, and industry linkages. Awards for recognition received by Echono in the last two years, underlined the broader sectoral approval of his approach and the way the Fund is positioning itself on the continental stage.
It is therefore not surprising that private tertiary institutions have persistently called for inclusion among intervention beneficiaries. These felt that despite their growing contributions to human capital development and expansion of access to higher education, they were excluded from critical funding support needed to improve infrastructure, research capacity and staff development.
Proponents of this inclusion maintained that extending TETFund interventions to private institutions would promote fairness within the tertiary education system and enhance overall quality standards across the sector. They contended that such support will not only strengthen teaching and learning outcomes but also ensure that all institutions contributing to national development are adequately equipped to meet rising academic and technological demands.
Operationally, the Fund appears to have become more deliberate about implementation oversight. Project commissioning ceremonies and clearer lists of tenable institutions for scholarship interventions showed improved project identification and selection processes. The published lists and documented projects increased transparency for stakeholders and helped civil society and media hold the Fund and institutions to account. When institutions know the rules and the selection criteria in advance, they can plan capital projects that align with national priorities and are ready for timely execution, a change that benefits students directly through better hostels, labs and libraries.
Members of the media, who regularly cover Fund’s courtesy visits will readily attest to the fact that the ES has cultivated a consistent practice of encouraging journalists to ask questions for the purpose of seeking clarity.
Rather than limit such engagements to formal remarks, he often created room for interaction, underscoring the importance of open dialogue and informed reporting.
This habitual insistence on questions reflected a commitment to transparency and accountability, and recognizes media’s critical role in public enlightenment. By urging journalists to probe, clarify and interrogate issues, the TETFund leadership reinforces trust and ensures that the public receives accurate and comprehensive information about the Fund’s policies, programmes and interventions.
Although, no institutional turnaround is flawless, Echono’s TETFund deserves commendation for institutionalising dialogue and measurable programming. By prioritising capacity building for academics and institutional administrators, emphasising ICT and library upgrades, and streamlining stakeholder communication, the Fund is making decisions that will compound over years. For students and lecturers walking into renovated lecture halls, accessing improved digital resources or attending capacity-building workshops, they are lived improvements in educational quality and morale. If 2025 is judged by the standards of planning, stakeholder engagement and smarter allocations, TETFund under Arc Sonny Echono earns a confident, positive grade.
