.Says they’ve been captured in NRF
A former Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Fund (TETfund), Prof. Sulaiman Bogoro, at the weekend, said that the primary purpose of establishing the intervention agency was to address deficiencies in public institutions, a void he stated, was not lacking in private universities.
Bogoro, while emphasising that private universities in Nigeria have proliferated in recent years, outnumbering public universities, stated that the latter enrolled a larger number of students compared to the former, indicating a higher demand for support and intervention in public universities due to the larger student population.
The Professor of Animal Science, who maintained that private universities often charge higher fees compared to their public counterparts, said that the development had resulted in private universities catering for a different demographic and financial bracket, thus not falling within the scope of institutions in need of TETfund’s intervention.
Bogoro spoke at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), during the launch of a book titled, “The Psychology of Growing Old: A Personal Experience for both Young and Old,” written by Sehinde Arogbafa.
He said: “Today, the private universities outnumber the public ones by over 20. The public universities are about 120, while the private ones are about 160.”
He added: “Invariably, we say we have more private universities, but in terms of student population, the private universities are holding only less than 10 per cent of the population. What does that say? The majority of the students are in public institutions. That was the wisdom of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the time, and it is still valid.
“If you look at the private institutions, children of the poorest of the poor are unable to pay. Some of them charge in dollars. These are some of the considerations that the government will review. Some of us were able to complete our studies because of the intervention of the government.
“But then, TETfund, which has admitted private universities as partners in research through the National Research Fund (NRF), has now started admitting private universities as co-partners in research.
“They may not be principal investigators, but they are second partners, and you can fund them up to 50 per cent of the total research grant cost for any particular intervention in terms of priorities for Nigeria’s knowledge economy.”
