Nigerians woke up on New Year with the exhilarating news of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s signing of the N28.7 trillion 2024 budget into law.

As attention shifts to implementation of the budget, eyes of stakeholders in the education sector are gazed on the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). Their reasons are valid – the intervention agency’s cardinal objective is to provide the badly needed funds to support tertiary education, provide scholarship and grants for staff to enhance the productivity and quality of higher education.

The Executive Secretary of the Fund, Arc. Sunny Echono, has set the ball rolling, indicating a significant increase in annual direct disbursements in response to improvement in tax collections.
This, he said, will translate to more projects in the nation’s tertiary institutions, even as he disclosed that over 70 projects spread across 17 tertiary institutions in 11 states across the country were commissioned in the outgone year.

Speaking at a recent engagement at the Fund’s headquarters in Abuja, the Executive Secretary applauded the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) for its diligent efforts in collecting the education taxes. He also said that its 2023 collection of education tax was the highest in a single year since inception.

The TETFund boss also attributed the high revenue to increases approved by the former and present administrations to 3 per cent of accessible profit and other factors diligently implemented by the FIRS in collaboration with the Fund.

Highlighting the areas of focus under the 2024 intervention programme, Arc. Echono stated that TETFund had budgeted a significant increase in annual direct disbursements in response to the improvement in tax collections.

According to him, 90.54 per cent of taxes generated is budgeted for direct disbursement and designated 6.5 per cent for some projects and 2.94 for stabilization to enable the fund to respond to emerging issues, all of which are subject to final distribution/approvals.

Echono expressed the Fund’s determination to deepen research, promote innovation and honing of skills, and encourage the discovery and development of creative talents amongst scholars and especially the students as a major pillar of the renewed hope agenda of the present administration.

“The proposed new interventions in the annual direct disbursement include the establishment of Career Centre/Unit in all categories of beneficiary institutions, as well as institution-based skills development for polytechnics to improve the employability and career prospects of students.

“For the Special Direct Disbursement, we have increased the allocation and number of beneficiary institutions for the Special High Impact Programme”, he said.

He added that the SHIP will also focus on “provision of hostels, using the Public/ Private Partnership arrangement for selected beneficiary institutions.

“We have also sustained allocations for Research including the National Research Fund Research and Innovation Fund, uptake of research findings to commercialization, and supervision of scholars’ Ph.D research.
“We have made provision for four central multipurpose laboratories and an additional provision for the three agricultural laboratories and farms initiated in 2023.
“We have sustained the implementation of the ICT roadmap with provision for converged services, subscription services for fixed cable/internet access and the Tertiary Education Research Application Services initiative.
“There will be an upgrade of laboratories, workshops and equipment to universities, polytechnics and Colleges of Education (Technical) for the 2024 Intervention Year. There will also be the early grade resource centres phase II to Colleges of Education”, he said.

He described the outgone year 2023 as an impactful year that had witnessed a series of programmes such as the development of the TETFund ICT roadmap culminating in the deployment of the Beneficiary Identity Management Service (BIMS) and launching of the Tertiary Education, Research, Applications & Services (TERAS) platforms.

He added that there had also been the commencement of the designs and strategy for the innovation hubs to selected beneficiary institutions, and the constitution of the committee for the establishment of two central research laboratories.

According to him, the future of university education in Nigeria lies in sustainable funding, which he said had heightened the need to explore innovative and sustainable funding models for university education in the country.

He added: “Public universities suffer from over-dependence on the government. They are therefore susceptible to revenue shortfall, budgetary constraints, and other competing needs of the government.

“A regime of declining revenue and rising corruption manifests in deteriorating infrastructure and poor remuneration for lecturers. The incessant industrial actions over the last few years by staff unions in our universities, bordering on challenges of funding, have heightened the need to explore innovative, sustainable funding which implies rethinking stakeholders’ involvement in education financing to secure a qualitative and functional tertiary education system, which is an essential tool for sustainable development.”