The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), early in the week, unveiled 10 books published under its book project.
 
The titles of the books include Principles of Veterinary Surgery: A Concise Text for Veterinary Students; Fundamental of Chemistry; Fundamental of Public Finance; Java for Beginners and Web Design; Programming for Beginners and A Guide to Teacher Competence Evaluation.
 
Others are, The Comparative Method and Civil-Military Relations; Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulics for Engineers; Financial Deepening and Economic Growth in Nigeria as well as Motivational Factors and Teachers Efficiency in Secondary Schools.
 
The books were authored by individuals who submitted their manuscripts for assessment and publication by TETFund.
 
The unveiling ceremony, which was held in Abuja brought together members of the academia, books authors, academic staff unions as well as heads of federal education agencies.
 
The Fund had in recent years, inaugurated a Higher Education Book Development project and Fund with the aim of tackling the paucity of tertiary level textbooks.
 
The TETFund Book Development Fund intervenes in three key areas including, publication of academic books and conversion of high-quality theses into books; support for professional associations’ Journals as well as establishment and sustainability of Academic Publishing Centres (APCs) across the six geo-political zones of the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
 
In the same manner, the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) was inaugurated to collaborate with the Fund towards ensuring that quality books are published by Nigerian authors for Nigerian students and scholars. 
 
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, was represented at the occasion by the Minister of State, Education, Goodluck Nana Opiah. Commending TETFund for the initiative, the Minister expressed concern that being over-dependent on foreign academic publications may pose some dangers to the nation’s education sector.
 
The Minister believed that boosting indigenous authorship is progress in the right direction.
 
He said: “Paucity of indigenously authored and produced tertiary level textbooks and related academic publications in the nation’s tertiary institutions is known fact over time. Nigeria’s tertiary education institutions became dependent on books published outside the country with the attendant consequences of the pressure on the demand for foreign exchange.
 
“It is equally worrisome that the quality of most academic publications in our country leaves much to be desired. It is therefore expected that nurturing the culture of quality authorship and the production of indigenous books will not only ensure the availability of relevant books in the diverse subject areas that take cognizance of our local environment and sensitivities but will also safeguard national pride and reduce the demand for foreign exchange.”
 
For the Executive Secretary, TETFund, and Architect Sonny Echono, this is just the beginning of the harvest of quality texts for the nation’s tertiary institutions.
 
The Executive Secretary (ES), gladly announced that additional 30 books also sponsored by the Fund would be unveiled before the end of the year while about 50 more would be published by the Fund in the coming year.
 
He said: “We have over 66 manuscripts. What we are unveiling today was published by only one publishing centre. By the time we unveil the remaining 30 books in December, you will see all the authors cut across the three layers of our tertiary education institutions.
 
Speaking on the Academic Publishing Centres, the ES noted that issues surrounding the operation of the seven designated centres have been resolved and that very soon, they will all begin to function optimally.
 
“When we came in March, only the University of Lagos Academic Publishing Centre was fully functional and running; a few of them had little issues, some equipment, others contractual issues but we have resolved all of them now.
 
“Four have been completed since the last few months and we hope to finish the remaining by the end of September”, he stated.
 
The author of one of the books, The Comparative Method and Civil-Military Relations, Professor Emeritus, Joel Bayo Adekanye, commended TETFund for taking the steps to combat the paucity of texts in higher institutions.
 
He described the initiative as “a very, very important programme, which the Fund has begun with a view to bridging the existing gap in the availability of quality textbooks in the nation’s tertiary institutions.”
 
As a pioneer scholar and lecturer in the intellectual development of civil-military relations in the area of study and research policy in Nigeria, the 81-year-old Professor Emeritus informed that he had been working on the book for the past 20 years, and given his status in the area of civil-military relations, he has no doubt that his book and the nine others, will receive positive global acceptance.
 
He stated that all the books that were presented last Tuesday in Abuja by the Fund, having gone through the rigour of assessment, were beyond ordinary printing.
 
“They were published because they went through the rigour of assessment. Although they are written with the Nigerian environment in mind, they should nevertheless, have mileage beyond the locality of their authors.
 
“Until now, most academics would jacket their own printed materials and sell them as handouts without making them go through any assessment before making them compulsory for students. Such books should go through an assessment process; this is the essence of the TETFund Book Project and I am happy to have been invited”, he added.
 
Adekanye submitted his manuscript independently even before knowing about the book project.
 
“As I said earlier, I have been working on it for over two decades and it is a definitive textbook on the civil-military relationship which is my field.”
 
The Comparative Method and Civil-Military Relations is a 17-chapter book, comprising two sets of chapters. While some of the works had been published previously in various international journals, about 50 per cent was freshly written.     
 
“The book is divided into parts and a number of the previously published articles consists of my best articles ever including the Theory of Modernizing Soldier, a critic written in 1981.”
 
The Professor equally corrected the impression in the public domain that the essence of the book project was to stem the influx of books authored by foreign writers.

He stated that Nigeria deals with the intellectual marketplace of ideas which is a global thing.
 
“I told them at the book presentation that these books have gone through peer review and they have been accepted as good. The quality however has to depend on two things – the readership and the intellectual global market.
 
“Any good book must compete with local and foreign readers. The law of the jungle applies here – survival of the fittest.
 
“If your book is not of global standard, it cannot compete. TETFund has a high standard which is a positive thing.”
 
The Chairman, TETFund TAG, Professor Charles Aworh, was also at the ceremony and he told the audience that 20 TETFund-sponsored textbooks, which were published in 2014 in different fields enjoyed wide acceptance from within and outside the country.
 
He also disclosed that three out of the 10 newly published books were from Ph.D theses. While assuring of the commitment to the project, he expressed the need for the empowerment of the publishing centres.
 
“We are on course to publish 40 books before the end of the year but the only challenge is the capacity of our universities to publish.” According to him, authors are ready to publish and manuscripts are readily available.
 
Concerning the book project, the Pro-Chancellor, Federal University of Technology (FUT Minna), Professor Olu Obafemi, had once stated that of all the efforts made by TETFund such as fiscal development, physical infrastructure, research funding, sponsorship of local and international conferences as well as the development of books, Nigerian written books for Nigerian tertiary institutions and the National Research Foundation are very critical landmarks that one can easily point at that TETFund has embarked on.
 
According to him, applauding TETFund will not make them rest on their oars but will boost their will.