• Echono, TETFund boss, justifies more financial allocation to varsities than polys, colleges of education
From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Sonny Echono, former Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, is Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). He shared his experience in this interview.
Excerpts:
What was the state of TETFund when you came in March 2o22?
I met TETFund as a focused and highly geared public intervention agency committed to the delivery of its mandate. And over time, through the efforts of successive leaders, we have tried to keep faith with that promise.
I had the privilege of serving on the Board of Trustees of TETFund for four years before my appointment as the Executive Secretary. That gave me distinct advantage in terms of the learning curve, which was much smoother than if I was just coming in from outside.
I have an informed and broader view of the system due to my years as Permanent Secretary in Federal Ministry of Education. I did pledge, when I assumed office, to build on the foundation laid and concentrate on improvements in efficiency, quality of service delivery, as well as promptness of those actions.
So, where is TETFund now in terms of service delivery?
That feedback should come from the beneficiary institutions. But I can tell you that we carried out a roots and branches review of our entire system.
In doing that, we invited experts from the academia, Head of Service, Federal Civil Service Commission, Federal Ministry of Education and other agencies, along with our staff to take another look at our structure. In the process, we found shortcomings in some areas and took steps to make necessary improvements.
What are the innovations introduced?
Two key innovations were brought in after that review. We established different cadres in consonance with our mandate and created Department of Revenue and Investments. Over the years, emphasis has been on expenditure.
But this time, we decided that we want to grow our revenue base by bringing in more companies into the education tax net and monitor how the taxes are being paid in 2022 in terms of efficiency of collection. We now have a department to focus on that, working with Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to ensure that is done.
What have been the gains so far?
The number one gain is the phenomenal improvement we recorded in our revenue as well as disbursements. From N189 billion revenue in 2021, to over N320 billion in 2022, that is being implemented in this year’s budget.
Similarly, despite low budget last year, rate of access by beneficiary institutions of the fund (disbursements) since the fund was established. We want to keep that trajectory going.
There are also new areas of focus, which are aimed at changing the quality of manpower to improve efficiency. The world has moved beyond knowledge for its sake. Knowledge has moved from what you know to what you can do with it. Our educational system must be transformed to reflect that reality. This “disruptive” change is obviously powered by ICT.
We are focusing on entrepreneurship, innovations, and we would love that our institutions key into this. We also want our teachers to participate in competitive research, locally and internationally. That will improve their footprints, and ranking of our institutions, as well as revenue for the researchers.
We have also improved on our turnaround time without affecting quality. We are gradually digitalising our services and that has reduced face-to-face contact, thus saving time and reducing corruption.
Why do universities get more funds than polytechnics and colleges of education?
The disparity is the dictate of law. The sharing formula is contained in our enabling law. Remember that TETFund is a product of long time study on the needs of the institutions. The simple reason is that students are more in the universities than the polytechnics and colleges of education.
By law, we are directed to allocate 50 per cent of the resources to universities, while the polytechnics and colleges of education get 25 per cent, respectively. This year, each university got over N1billion, which is statutory. It doesn’t represent the total amount some got.
Some will get up to N5 billion or more at the end of the day, while other interventions are disbursed under different platforms. In this year’s disbursement, colleges of education got higher allocation than polytechnics, because there are more polytechnics than colleges of Education sharing the same amount (25 per cent).
Dr Abdullahi Baffa, a former TETFund executive secretary, established Access Clinic platform to clear backlogs of inaccessible funds. What’s the state of that policy?
That policy was a significant one. We didn’t just continue it, we moved beyond giving it a designated timeline to making it open all year round. All institutions are at liberty to approach us any time on the matter. Sometimes, we write to the institutions individually based on our observations, while some others come to us on their own.
I have a system that enables me monitor the performance of our projects nationwide in real time. That has been helpful. We have also organised interactions with agencies like Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) to explain the procedures and how to fast-track procurement. We interface on their behalf in several areas to ensure things go well as planned.
That’s the reason for the significant rise in the rate funds are being accessed by institutions. We used to carry out audit after every fund release, but that was changed because it was delaying projects. We also made provisions for relevant specialists to handle every area of intervention within the institutions. In addition, we have different platforms where we meet to solve problems and facilitate implementation and that has been helpful.
What about the abandoned projects?
It’s a major concern for us. But for the first time, we got approval for the completion of abandoned and distressed projects to be a specific line vote in this year’s budget and the funds were approved. We are currently engaging with the institutions.
We have shortlisted over 20 institutions that have abandoned projects that should be completed this year. We are doing that in phases until we finish the backlog of abandoned projects we have in our institutions. While we do that, we try to avoid other things that could lead to abandoned projects.
We have taken measures to ensure that is done. We have unbundled projects within interventions, reviewed guidelines and streamlined process that hitherto contributed to that.
What of unutilised releases for conferences?
We applied the same principle in that too. The expected results are being recorded. We felt that subsisting arrangement created several problems of its own. The old practice was to ban any institution that has scholars that collected money for conferences and never attended, that obviously created problems.
While it was convenient to make the heads of institutions sit up to their responsibilities, we felt the practice was unfair to other scholars in the school who are by the decision denied access to funds for conferences because of the sins of previous scholars.
We resolved to stop that and decided that all our sanctions should be directed to the actors responsible for the actions. Heads and bursars of the institutions were charged with the responsibility of recovery of the money.
Private institutions have continued demand for inclusion in TETFund interventions. Any hope for them soon?
Incidentally, I had this conversation with the private institutions not too long ago. I made it clear to them that TETFund is a public institution established for public tertiary institutions at both state and federal levels.
Nevertheless, there are areas that government can be of help, and not TETFund. This is one of the reasons we are clamouring for education bank where investors and developers can access funds for investments on long term basis on low interest rate. Currently, we are collaborating with private institutions in areas outside physical infrastructure.
Remember that government doesn’t interfere in area of fees in the private institutions. They are at liberty to charge fees, even though some people claim it’s high and that the schools make much profits. I personally know it’s difficult to make profit in a social sector like education.
Your predecessor, Prof Bogoro, assembled Research and Development (R&D) teams on different sectors of the economy. What has come out of that?
The questions are still being asked. My attitude to the R&D drive was that it’s a very good idea and I continued to run with it. I was part of the plan from the beginning, so I have good knowledge of it. But there is a little reservation I have about it particularly in the number of the committees and its members.
When I came, we did right sizing. One of the committees had about 99 members. We brought down the numbers to 68 or 69 and they are working as expected. This was also done on several other committees and we are recording achievements.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) accused TETFund of holding back 41 per cent of budgeted funds. Is it true?
ASUU created a wrong impression with that statement, though inadvertently. They were only interested in breakdown and us publicising the beneficiaries. They are part of the system so they know better and have superior information. Also, we use them very well to monitor projects and interventions in schools.
For the records, the 60 per cent ASUU was talking about are the annual direct disbursements that go to the institutions on equality basis. Each institution, university, polytechnic and college of education, is given an equal amount of money irrespective of size, population and impact. The remaining percentage is tied to specific projects, programmes and interventions that do not apply to all the institutions uniformly.
For example, each year, we make allocation to the National Research Fund (NRF). But some scholars felt that, because every university was established to fulfil three mandates, namely, teaching and learning, research and community development, that the money should be shared to all institutions to undertake research because it’s part of their mandate. We rejected that suggestion because it will affect the size and impact of the disbursement.
There are also high impact projects, which as the name implies were designed to make high impact in the institutions. Projects like Senate buildings, hostels, auditoria/lecture theatres, libraries and central laboratories are in this category.
Currently, we are doing batches of minimum of 18 institutions; six universities, six polytechnics and six colleges of education to carry out the impactful projects. The minimum we disburse is N1 billion. This year, we disbursed N30 billion to the selected institutions.
Each benefitting university got N3billion, while each polytechnic and college of education got N1billion each. Special High Impact (SHI) project is usually at the discretion of the Board of Trustees for which allocations are zonal-based and are done equitably by the decision of the board as enshrined in the enabling act. Beneficiaries are selected based on certain criteria.
The benefitting institutions this year are Ibrahim Babangida University, Lapai, Niger State; Federal University, Wukari, Taraba State; Federal University, Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State; Imo State University of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences; Edo State University and Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State.
Benefitting polytechnics are Federal Polytechnic, Offa Kwara State; Federal Polytechnic, Gombe, Gombe State; Federal Polytechnic, Kabo, Kano State; Anambra State Polytechnic; Mgbakwu Federal Polytechnic of Oil and Gas, Bonny, Rivers State and Oyo State College of Agriculture and Technology, Igbo-Ora.
Benefitting colleges of education are Plateau State College of Education; Federal College of Education, Yola; Federal College of Education, Zaria, Kaduna State; Enugu State College of Education; Delta State College of Education and Tai Solarin College of Education, Ogun State.
What is the percentage of the funds disbursed?
I can confirm to you that 95 per cent of funds that come to us are disbursed to the institutions. The records are there. The remaining five per cent is retained by TETFund for payment of staff salaries and other statutory monitoring that we do.
We release monies in tranches. Before we make any financial release, we often visit the locations to verify and ascertain performance. It is also from that five per cent and the savings from our operations as a result of the reforms introduced that we plan to undertake the construction of our regional offices this year. We don’t go beyond that five per cent and the records are there to verify.