A total of of ₦213 billion has been disbursed by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund for Nigerian tertiary schools.
Let's take a look at the numbers:
The Universities.
Nigeria has 74 government universities. 40 of them are run by the federal government. The remaining 34 are run by various state governments.
Each one of them will receive the sum of One billion, Nine million, Four Hundred and Ten thousand naira (₦1,009,410,000 or 1.94 billion)
What this means is that the universities will receive ₦74,696,340,000 or ₦74.7 billion. That's about 35% of the total intervention fund.
The Polytechnics.
There are 54 government polytechnics in Nigeria. Each of them will receive ₦691,632,000 or ₦691.6 million. That's a total of ₦37,348,128,000 or ₦37.3 billion. That's just over half of the university allocation and about 18% of the total fund.
Colleges of Education.
There are 55 colleges of education in Nigeria and each of them will receive ₦679,057,000. That's a total of ₦37,348,135,000. That's a slightly larger share of the Polytechnic pie, but an extra school to share that money with.
Here's what we also know about this funding;
It's being executed by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). According to it's Executive Secretary, Dr Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, this is the biggest ever annual direct disbursement (normal intervention) given to any beneficiary institution since the establishment of the Fund.
He said in supporting the fund to continue to pursue its mandate, President Buhari, approved the sum for the TETFund 2016 Intervention Budget for the year 2017 intervention activities.
More numbers, based on allocation:
Total fund: ₦213,418,124,493.75
Annual direct disbursements: ₦149,392,687,145.63/₦149.4 billion
High Impact Phase VI: ₦30,000,000,000/₦30 billion
Zonal interventions: ₦12,000,000,000/₦12 billion
Stabilisation Fund: ₦10,670,906,224.69/10.7 billion
Designated projects: ₦5,400,000,000.00/₦5.4 billion
National Research Fund: ₦1,000,000,000/₦1 billion
Who's going to manage all these funds?
The management of each institution will be responsible for managing the funds. The Provosts of colleges, the Rectors of polytechnics, and the Vice Chancellors of universities. They'll be working with a blueprint from an annual strategic planning workshop held in the past.
Is there any progress here?
Yes, it looks like there is.
According to Baffa, that this allocation is almost thrice what was allocated in 2015 even though the Fund had more money then than it has now.
Academic Staff Training and Development for Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education will now get 300m, 200m, and 100m each respectively. Compare this to the 100m, 70m and 60m allocation in 2015 respectively.
While programme upgrade is allocated N565.4million for universities, N380.632m for polytechnics and N371.06m for colleges of education as against N100m, N70m and N72m respectively, in 2015.
The Executive Secretary, however, announced the cancellation of special intervention programmes of the Fund by President Buhari and ordering investigation into alleged abuses of 2014/2015 special interventions.
He noted that in the recent past special intervention from the fund was turned into trade with vendors looking for buyers.
He said between 2014 and 2015 during the last administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, over N260 billion was diverted under the guise of special intervention in some tertiary institutions.
He had more to say about the former administration.
Baffa said:
“The president had, while approving the 2016 intervention budget not made provisions for special interventions due to its abuse in the past.
“Therefore, in the 2017 intervention activities, no allocation was made for special interventions. This measure is in addition to the cancellation of the special allocations for projects that did not commence prior to August 2016; that is from the date of my appointment as the Executive Secretary.
He had some advise for the institutions.
“Beneficiary institutions are therefore urged to steer clear of fraudsters who are still going about looking for, or claiming to have gotten allocations for special interventions.
“Rather than spending the bulk of the money on normal intervention, it was turned upside down.
“In 2015, for example, over N200 billion was recklessly allocated as special intervention to very few beneficiary institutions while only N50 billion was allocated for normal intervention to be shared among all beneficiary institutions.
“Something is wrong when you take N200 billion and allocate based on discretion and the one that the law said that they must be treated equally-all universities must be treated equally; all polytechnics must be treated equally and all colleges of education must be treated equally-only 20 per cent, about N50 billion was shared.
“We are lucky that Mr President came to the rescue and cancelled all special interventions for 2014 and 2015 for which money has not been drawn.
“We are able to save almost N74 billion for the cancellation of the more than N200 billion special intervention fund.
“We are also appreciative of Mr President's approval that special intervention for 2014/2015 for which money has already been paid should be investigated and this investigation is going to commence soon.”
Some additional stuff.
There's going to be a an Access Clinic for beneficiary institutions with a backlog of unutilised funds.
“The main objective of the clinic is discussed, diagnose and remedy all encumbrances so as to get the institution fulfil the requirements to access.
Some of the time, the reasons for backlog are around accounting for (retiring) previous allocation, rough transition from one administration to another, infringements by contractors, insufficient information, non-compliance with procurement act.”
It looks like we might be in for an optimistic year in education, if these funds are properly managed of course.
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