BY NGOZI NWANKWO, ABUJA – The Federal Government has announced that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) will defund any non-performing Centre of Excellence it established eight years ago.
Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman, who announced this on Friday, May 3, 2024, said the government will not continue to reward indolence by giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are expected to do.
Mamman, who stated these while receiving two reports of TETFund’s ad hoc committees on Assessment/Review of its Centres of Excellence and Operationalisation of Skills Development Special Intervention, said the government is encouraging scholars to simply rise to the occasion and deliver on their scholarship like what world class scholars do.
According to the Minister; “We are not going to reward indolence. We can’t be giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do.In terms of the skilling, we want to raise the equipment level of those institutions, polytechnic and others so that they can provide all the skill set that we need in Nigeria in the highest quality that can service the country and internationally”.
On his part, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Mr Sonny Echono, said the fund will not continue to throw money away to centres that are not living up to expectations, saying that some centres have funds with TETFund that they have not accessed since inception.
In the words of Echono; “The funds are with us because we will not release until you reach a milestone, but while they have delayed in reaching those milestones, are causes of concerns”.
The TETFund boss noted that the strategy for establishing centres of excellence was a very good one because the Fund realised that it didn’t have enough resources to improve all the facilities of all public institutions at the same time.
He further said; “The idea was to incubate, to have one centre, the right equipment, the right tools, the right faculty and experts that would lead our efforts in research, in promoting scholarship at the highest level so that they can also inspire other centres.
“We are going to be pooling from other institutions within the area who want to do further research or who want to carry out any other exploratory study in those particular fields in those areas,” he said.
Echono said some of the centres have done fantastically well since inception, stating that a lot of them are doing innovations.
“Sokoto just came up with one major solution for us. For example, they were the ones that discovered this vaccine for COVID in partnership with other institutions. Now we are also in the process of getting vaccines for Lassa fever and so many others.
“So, some are doing very well. And some have come up with prototypes that we now hoping to take to industries so that they begin to produce these goods and services,” he said.
On the non-performing institutions, he said “If you were established five years ago and you are still at your infancy, you have not been able to provide modern laboratories, facilities for scholars to come and learn, we want to know why. But we don’t want to be arbitrary.
“So, it decided to look at some institutions, find out their relative positions in terms of the quality of their faculty, their reputation in certain courses and in in certain areas and designated them as centres of excellence for those particular courses”.
Earlier, the Committee on the Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence, led by Prof Oyewale Tomori, in its report, decline to recommend any centre for upgrade
The report noted that most centres did not utilise their first seed grant of N150 million for the initial infrastructures required in the centres, and advised TETFund to provide some bail out funds to the centres to enable the proper take off of the centres.
The committee also called on the fund to ensure that all funds for the Centre of Excellence are disbursed directly to the Centre of excellence account.
Tomori said; “If the Centres are to achieve the set objectives, TETFund in collaboration with institutions hosting the centres should ensure that Centre Directors are on full time assignment at the Centre.
“All Centres that are not performing well should be given six (6) Months Moratorium as a way to prevail on them to refocus and achieve their true mandate after which a revisit will be conducted to determine their status and continue funding,” the report recommended.
