By Gabriel Dike
The Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa on Friday, read the riot act to heads of tertiary institutions to comply with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) directive, warning that their schools might face sanction for non-compliance.
Alausa also warned vice chancellors, rectors and provosts to stop the establishment of satellite campuses, construction of new Senate buildings and that institutions with less population of students would no longer benefit from TETFund intervention grant.
The education minister gave the warning at a one-day strategic engagement with heads of beneficiary institutions, bursars and heads of procurement in Lagos.
He used the occasion to defend the ministry’s stoppage of TETFund foreign sponsorship of lecturers abroad.
Alausa said aside from the lack of foreign exchange problems, about 85 per cent of TETFund foreign sponsored lecturers did not return after the completion of their training.
Alausa wondered why heads of institutions operate satellite campuses, thus wasting government resources instead of deploying it to needed areas.
His words: “Replication of mandate is unacceptable. Any institution found wanting would be stopped from getting TETFund intervention grant.”
Alausa also added that any institution with fewer students’ population would not be allowed to benefit from TETFund grant.
The education minister said satellite campuses were established for politics reasons, noting that many of the institutions replicated campuses in different places and were also producing poor quality graduates.
“This difficult but necessary step was taken to address the high costs of foreign training and the growing incidence of scholar abscondment. We remain firmly committed to strengthening domestic academic development initiatives, ensuring that our scholars continue to benefit from robust, high-impact training programmes within Nigeria.”
According to him, 18 universities have been identified to benefit from the SHIP initiative, which reflects government broader goal of bridging the human resource gaps in Nigeria’s healthcare system through targeted educational investments.