The joy of the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), knew no bound last Monday, when it was presented with a brand new 30-seater Toyota Coaster bus by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund.)

The official handover ceremony was conducted by the Executive Secretary of the Fund, Sonny Echono. He made it known that the bus was to make movements and activities of the body easy and more efficient.
 
Aside the bus, the Executive Secretary (ES), also spoke about other areas of interventions that the Fund is currently looking into to ensure maximum comfort of students on campuses across the country. Some of these areas include hostel accommodation and effective transportation structures within campuses.

Addressing the students’ body, Echono stated that the meeting was in continuation of the regular interface with stakeholders in the nation’s education sector.

He said: “I want to tell us that this is the continuation of our constant dialogue with stakeholders. Just as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been preaching, students are at the centre of any policy on education because education is all about students. It is not about those that teach but basically the students. So, every policy around education should be centred around students and how to equip them with the right skills and knowledge to enable them contribute meaningfully to the society when they graduate.  
   
“It is in the same line that TETFund is consulting with them to find out their needs, their expectations and their aspiration in order to guide our recommendations to the Board of Trustees and to Mr. President to make the right interventions.”

On the issue of hostel accommodation, the ES admitted that the quality of accommodation in different campuses of public tertiary institutions is not something to be proud of. He therefore assured students that efforts are being made towards addressing the situation.

 
He said: “At the last engagement, there were requests bordering on students’ accommodation because we all know that the quality of spaces where our students stay are not things that we should be proud of. We at TETFund are already designing interventions along those lines to ensure that we increase the stock of students’ hostels, some directly and others through PPP arrangements because we also believe that we can leverage on our funds to attract investors to our campuses but we can do some of them directly through our own projects”, he said.
 
On the issue of transportation within campuses, Echono did not want to preempt Mr. President. He only assured his guests that the issue was receiving desired attention.
 
He said: “We also talked about the issue of transportation within campuses. I don’t want to preempt Mr. President but we are already looking into those two major requests of theirs and they shall yield results.”
 
Before handing over the car documents and the key of the bus to the students, the ES charged them with the responsibility of monitoring intervention projects on campuses. This development, he believed, will put contractors on their toes, not just for timely completion of projects but also, to ensure good quality job.
 
“Another engagement we are having with the students is the fact that we want them to be our eyes in their respective institutions. TETFund interventions translate to execution of projects and implementation of different intervention lines, and these all happen on campuses. So, we want a situation where, when something is going wrong with projects on our campuses, we have multiple ways of being able to get information, and one of those ways is through the students who are the beneficiaries of those interventions.
 
“So, by our programme, we want to be able to identify on each campus, a contact person that would be able to liaise with our monitoring teams and be able to engage with the contractors. Sometimes, they may be required to visit a particular site, confirm whether work is going on there or not, look at the quality of work and see whether the contractors are on site or not so that we can have a first-hand information; not a situation where we wait for a school to apply for a particular tranche, then, we send our team there only to discover that everything has already gone wrong.
 
“We are doing similar engagements with other stakeholders. In fact, the staff unions are also helping us to carry out monitoring of projects. So, we feel that going forward, this will help us to make our monitoring process more transparent and more engaging. Also, when people know that students who are constantly there are watching out, and can let TETFund know whether they are working well or not, I am sure that those working on those projects will sit up and ensure that they do good quality work.”
 
The ES however informed them that the template for the monitoring would be worked out in consultation with the students to state how the Fund wants to structure it.
 
“As I said, they will give us a full representation in each of the almost 250 beneficiary institutions across the country. And with this, the Fund will officially commission the students’ body to be part of the monitoring teams for intervention projects across the campuses.
 
Having said that, the ES went on to perform the symbolic transfer of the coaster bus to the students amidst cheers and encomium on the Fund and its leadership.
 
In his response, the President, NANS, Usman Barambu, who came with some of the executive members and former President, pledged to be ambassadors of TETFund.
 
He said that the student’s body had earlier met with President Tinubu and tabled some of their requests, which include provision of hostel accommodation on campuses as well as provision of means of transportation on campuses.
 
“But the important thing we mentioned was the recommendation of TETfund. We called on him to do more for TETFund. We told him that 90 per cent or more of the support for tertiary institutions came from TETFund.
 
“Without TETFund, our institutions would have died. We are proud to say it because if you go to our campuses, you will witness the activities of TETFund. We are proud of that and we keep thanking Arc Echono and promise to contribute our own quota to support TETFund.
 
“As I have always said to our people, whenever we request for something from TETFund, they usually surprise us. Now, we are talking about the gift of a new bus and the ES has introduced the issue of monitoring. We have our independent monitoring group but not approved by him.
According to his remarks, we are now empowered to monitor projects in our schools. I want to assure him that we will do our best to see that the contractors do the right thing because we have students that can work from morning till night, monitoring them.”

The President of the students’ body however tasked the ES to ensure that sanctions are meted to erring contractors to serve as deterrent.
“There should be disciplinary measures against any defaulting contractor so that students doing the monitoring and bringing reports to you would be encouraged to do more. We would be proud to do that. We will forward the names and contacts of the monitoring group to TETFund.”
 
Adding: “The presence of TETFund is glaring in majority of our tertiary institutions. Like I said earlier, we have our independent monitoring committee that goes round, and we realised that part of the education stakeholders that is doing perfectly well is TETFund and we commend them for that.” He said that the bus will help the students’ body in carrying out its activities and make it more efficient in its mandates.

 
Also, to further enhance standard of education in Nigeria, Barambu said that there was need for TETFund to do more interventions, especially in the area of sponsoring lecturers for further studies by way of expanding the number of opportunities granted unto them so that they would be better equipped to impact knowledge.
 
Balancing TETFund’s interventions with demands by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for better funding of education in the country, NANS’ President said that there had been an interface between the body and President Tinubu, and that the students have explained the need for government to increase funding opportunities for TETFund to enable it expand its interventions.
 
“If you visit any public tertiary institution, remove TETFund project and see what would be left. Yet, while we thank TETFund for all that it is doing, we still need more. That is what we told Mr. President. Yes, TETFund is doing so well but government should support it to do more.”
 
To TETFund, NANS expressed its gratitude for the support. The body however urged ASUU and the Federal Government to be mutually respectful to their agreements.
 
“There are things that require political solution. Even though it is their right, ASUU still needs to shift ground for national peace”, NANS held.