Reinvent TETFund for greater impact, quality delivery

States abandoning funding of capital projects in tertiary institutions to agency

Former Vice Chancellor, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Niger State, Prof. Ibrahim A. Kolo, has frowned at the growing habit of state governments abandoning the funding, especially of capital projects in their institutions to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).

He has also stressed the need to revisit some of the present policies that have been rightly or wrongly perceived as unjustifiable or lopsided in the disbursements of funds to select institutions and even establishments not specifically covered in the TETFund Act, just as he wants the agency to be reinvented for greater impact, quality delivery.

Giving his perspectives on how to reinvigorate the agency in a paper titled, “ Reinventing TETFund for Sustainable Funding of Tertiary Education in Nigeria, Kolo pointed out that intervention for state tertiary institutions also needs to be in order to ensure that states do not just set up such institutions only to abandon the responsibility, especially capital projects to TETFund.

“In recent times, some state governments have established additional universities, polytechnics and colleges of education when they have not been able to provide for capital projects in the older ones. Although TETFund operates the policy of funding provision for only one category of state tertiary institutions annually, the reality is that state governments look the other way once a particular institution has been penciled down for the TETFund intervention. Policy measures like providing partnership funding for projects in two or more state institutions that choose to merge needs to be encouraged to discourage proliferation of state tertiary institutions, which become dependent on TETFund grants. Experience from many state-owned tertiary institutions shows that both in terms of available capacities and facilities, many of them will be better positioned under an inter-state consolidation with agreed funding arrangements between the two or more states joint-ownerships or with two or multi-campus structures which prioritise academic programmes to campuses based on areas of comparative advantage.

Since coming on board, TETFund, even as far back as its days as Education Trust Fund (ETF), has played a key role in revamping the deplorable state of infrastructure as well as sustaining and revolutionising tertiary education in the country. Till date, the trademark of ETF/TETFund heavily dots the entire tertiary education landscape in the country.

The former vice chancellor said going by the suggestions for the reinvention of TETFund for more impact-oriented tertiary education development delivery, legislative and policy synergy reviews will be required. While TETFund can start with policy reviews that do not infringe on the existing Act, certainly the ones requiring a turn-around of what presently obtains need to be further articulated and taken to the attention of the National Assembly.

On the need to revisit some of the present policies perceived as unjustifiable or lopsided in fund’s disbursements he said, “One example is the Board of Trustees and High Impact Interventions outside the normal interventions, which had made TETFund very vulnerable to political manipulations and intrigues in determining beneficiary institutions. Another example is how non-institutional establishments like the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and some of the inter-university centres were getting involved in either determining beneficiary institutions or becoming direct beneficiaries of allocations themselves. It is important to revisit the policy and legal gaps with a view to either accommodating these non-institutional establishments or to insulate TETFund from such commitments in the future. If also we must continue with the Board of Trustees and High Impact Projects allocation to select institutions, it is imperative that clear-cut policies for proposals on a competitive basis be spelt out along with the procedures for normal intervention allocations or to completely do away with such nebulous interventions to avoid abuses in stabilising TETFund.

Another nagging challenge for TETFund that needs to be strategically addressed is the non-utilisation of backlogs of normal interventions, which accrue over the years by many beneficiary institutions. There have been suggestions in the past for adopting the policy of making such accumulated funds to lapse, after either a given number of years or when accrued to a certain amount of allocation unutilised by beneficiary institutions. This suggestion becomes very apt for either executive policy directives or even legislative provisions.

“The present modality where TETFund relies on beneficiary institutions to determine and process their prioritised projects also needs to be reconsidered through the use of “pre-funds disbursement” verification mechanisms with BPP and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

“The situation of simply entrusting the beneficiary institutions with the process based on presentation of the required documents has actually left many projects subject to subtle manipulation and results in the later discovery of incompetent contractors and consultants as well as compromised qualities, despite efforts by TETFund to ensure strict compliance to standards. After all, most verifications of the status of contracting firms and consultants can now be done online. Extra measures in addition to good practices in place by TETFund in ensuring due process, due diligence and monitoring will certainly go a long way in strengthening quality of projects and procurements delivery.