When Echono charged institutions on synergy for effective utilization of funds

Not too long after his assumption of office, the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono, organised a Strategic Interactive Session for Heads of TETFund Beneficiary Institutions where he spoke on the need for synergy to ensure effective implementation of intervention funds.

With great enthusiasm to create impact, he said the essence of the engagements was to build a harmonious working relationship with relevant stakeholders in order to reposition the Fund for optimum performance.

As Heads of TETFund beneficiary institutions, the Executive Secretary reminded them of their crucial role in the delivery of the Fund’s mandate. He noted that it was the desire to develop the human capital that will service the various sectors of the economy that spurred government’s investment in the education of its citizens. Also, due to the identified deficit and decay in the country’s tertiary sub-sector, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund was established with the mandate to utilise accessible fund to improve the conditions and quality of the nation’s public tertiary institutions. Thus, he stressed that the task of repositioning the education sector is a collective one.

He said: “The enormous task of repositioning the tertiary education sector for sustained relevance is a collective one and it requires that we work in harmony and synergy to achieve the desired national objective of meeting our human capital needs through a robust and high quality higher education sector. This synergy, which is the aggregation of multiple resources that provide greater value, cooperation and teamwork, will require that we bring on board, our collective experiences and expertise towards finding solutions to specific national problems and goals.

“Upon assumption of office, I received briefings and presentations from all the departments of the Fund on the status of their various activities. This was to enable me assess the level of progress and to see if there are issues that needed to be addressed urgently. One of our primary areas of focus is digital literacy and the development and deployment of information and communication technology (ICT), including ubiquitous broadband and data connectivity/access to our institutions to enhance our ICT capabilities.

“This informed my visit to the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy to discuss possibilities and collaboration on our interventions and other needs in our tertiary institutions. Presently, the ICT department has embarked on several projects that include, dematerialisation and digitalisation of thesis projects; aggregation of electronic databases subscription project; upgrade of internet infrastructure and bandwidth positioning project; capacity building on productivity skills, eLearning methodologies and other ICT set skills acquisition.”

Beside his resolve to remove bottlenecks in accessing funds for projects, the Fund under Echono, also in line with its paradigm shift to content-based intervention and commitment to deepen Research and Development, introduced the train-the-trainer capacity building of academics on research proposal writing and research grant management skills, which led to the training of over 1,761 academics few months later.

“It is believed that those that have gained the training will in turn begin to train other academics locally and as such, the programme would be stepped down in subsequent years,” he said.

Echono then also proposed to refocus the entrepreneurship intervention line for universities to meet best global practice of entrepreneurship development and training, which he has pursued vigorously since then.

As the Fund under his leadership constantly reviews and improves on the systems and processes to deliver the kind of quality service that stakeholders expect from it, Echono had emphasised the need to strengthen zonal offices with accompanying delegations to render the Fund’s response time and cost efficiency more responsive to the expectations of all stakeholders.

“These and many more reform programmes will be implemented in the coming months to achieve better delivery of our mandate at the Fund. I sincerely seek your contributions and partnership in taking our tertiary education to the desired heights of national relevance and global competitiveness,” he added.

Interestingly, TETFund under Echono has been up and doing, and has not rescinded on any of the promises it made to stakeholders. The Executive Secretary’s commitment to hard work, judicious utilisation of funds and transparency has won him accolades locally and internationally. Not even the student body could disagree with programmes and projects initiated by the Fund as they stand to benefit more from physical structures and capacity building for lecturers.