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One year after, Echono’s achievements loud across public tertiary institutions

By Guardian Nigeria
14 April 2023   |   4:03 am
The Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono has just clocked one year in office and without doubt, he has exceeded expectations.

The Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono has just clocked one year in office and without doubt, he has exceeded expectations. Even his critics can attest to his giant strides towards repositioning Nigeria’s public tertiary education through effective planning, research and development, timely release of funds and effective collaborations.
 
As one who believes so much in research and innovation, Echono has, under one year, engaged in several partnerships to boost research and innovation that will help in producing graduates that can compete favourably with their counterparts from the rest of the world.
 


Little wonder his impact was immediately felt, not only at the Fund but also across government tertiary institutions and among relevant stakeholders due to the pace he adopted in executing his programmes and activities. He has brought to bear his ideas and visions developed through his several years of experience in public service. Many knew Echono to have pioneered several innovative projects in the various Ministries he served prior to his appointment as TETFund boss.

Some may attribute his timely and quality execution of projects, especially structures, to his profession as an architect. However, those who work closely with him linked it to his wide experience in public service. Aside from being an architect, he was one of the nation’s pioneering procurement officers and saw to the development of the procurement system that has come to change the narrative in public offices.
Accessible and easy going, Echono was noted for accommodating all, particularly those committed to creating desired impacts in their assigned duties.
 
He has been able to match words with actions to the extent that within a short interval of time, the nation can feel the impact of his administration in almost every area of intervention in high education institutions.
According to some of TETFund management staff, the striking thing about projects and programmes executed under Echono is that every one of them is taken on its own merit and its own cost as everyone is meant to be on their toes.
 


Committed to human capital development, Echono has made the TETFund Scholarship for Academic Staff more interesting and rewarding than ever. Consequently, the Fund can boast of sponsoring over 30,000 Nigerian academics to study all over the world and at home for Master degree programmes, Ph.D and Post-Doctoral programmes.

In the area of partnerships, the ES has made appreciable impacts through sustainable collaborations between tertiary institutions and the industry. One of such partnerships was between TETFund and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).
 

Echono

The collaboration was to establish the Agricultural Research and Innovation Fellowship for Africa (ARIFA) innovation platform in Nigeria, with the intention of raising a skilled workforce to re-engineer the continent’s agricultural food sector in the next 10 years.
 
Echono informed that the Fund’s intervention in ARIFA will impact on faculties and departments across the nation’s tertiary institutions and will see to the delivery of science-led solutions towards improved livelihoods as well as sustain and advance academic excellence.
So far, TETFund has supported over 120 scholars nominated by beneficiary institutions. While nominees for the first phase of the programme are concluding, pre-admission process for the second phase has already taken off. According to the ES, the Fund remains committed to supporting another 500 sets of fellows.

A director in the Fund, Arc. Uchendu I. Wogu, described Echono as a versatile administrator who helped in tackling some challenges confronting the Fund in procuring foreign exchange for scholars.
 
He said: “So, his approach has helped us to clean up a lot of the difficult corners that we have been struggling with over time, especially with the process of managing the scholars, particularly in this time of difficulty in getting foreign exchange. So, he has brought a good number of innovative ideas, ground-breaking processes and ease in the way we do our interventions and in the day to day work.
 
He added that Echono’s ability to take research in tertiary institutions to a higher dimension shocked shades of opinions who felt that since he was not necessarily from academia, research funding may suffer.
 
“In fact, when he arrived at TETFund, being somebody that is not necessarily from academia, some people or a good measure of opinion holders felt that not coming from academia, he may not be able to follow through. But he has shown them that being versatile is the key. What the Fund needs is a person of his caliber – someone that has that kind of attitude and competence to deliver on all the requirements of the mandate”, Wogu stated.
 
Also, to enable Nigerian tertiary institutions partake favourably in the European Union (EU) research funding, the ES recently constituted a National Contact Point (NCP) to provide necessary information that would facilitate the African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) partnership on research and innovation.
 
He has initiated the process to ensure that researchers from the nation’s higher education institutions participate effectively in the EU Research and Innovation framework programme, especially Horizon Europe.
 
He believed that as an intervention agency for public tertiary institutions in the country, TETFund has the mandate to facilitate the institutionalization of Research and Development (R&D) in tertiary institutions as part of the developmental efforts.
 
To ensure that universities and other tertiary institutions in the country produce graduates that are globally competitive with necessary skills and innovations, the ES has equally taken TETFund into a collaboration with Innov8 Hub.
 


Called, TETFund Alliance for Innovative Research (TETFAIR), the partnership is one of the several initiatives of TETfund under Echono.  The yearly programme is designed for researchers and academics in public universities across the country who have ideas they want to translate into innovation, solutions and enterprise.

Participants applied in Teams of two to four persons in each team and after rigorous evaluation by international experts, 19 teams were selected based on the innovativeness, viability and tangibility of their ideas. During the programme, participants would be taken through various courses that combine the intricacies, processes and procedures of Innovation Development, Prototyping and Venture Creation.

No doubt, Echono did not come to TETFund unprepared. He has changed the pace of work, and the attitude of those he works with has equally been impacted positively.
 
One of the biggest milestones recorded by him however was in the area of revenue generation. The first step was the achievement of the increase from 2% of Education Tax to 2.5%. The Fund is waiting for Presidential Assent to the latest Finance Act which recommended an increase of the Education Tax to 3%.
With the expected increase, the Fund can expand its scope of interventions. Based on this understanding, the E.S recently appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to assent to the Finance Act as a parting gift to the education sector.
 
If the 3% Education Tax is achieved, it is obvious that Arc. Echono in no distant time, will take the nation’s public tertiary education to the desired level through meaningful interventions in line with the mandate of the Fund.

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