TETFund spent N185bn for training of 35,000 scholars
NEWS DIGEST – The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) on Friday said it has spent N185 billion in training 35,000 scholars in public tertiary institutions through its Scholarship for Academic Staff programme which commenced in 2008.
Acting Director of Academic Staff Training and Development at TETFund, Abdullahi Imam, stated this when representatives of the TETFund Scholars Alumni Steering Committee visited the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono in Abuja.
The Director explained that the project was established with the sole aim of training and upscaling the educational capacity of the academic staff of beneficiary institutions, adding that the project is the second in expenditure after infrastructural projects of TETfund.
Imam sought the Executive Secretary’s approval to have a TETFund Scholars Alumni which he said will help identify areas of specialisation and pool them into a critical mass of knowledgeable workforce and change agents for the development of the nation.
He added that the alumni through its planned journals on issues like innovation and entrepreneurship, science, engineering and technology, art, humanities and social science would help to prevent or curtail intellectual flight.
Imam said: “Next is the compilation of soft copies of their thesis in order to have a repository for the National Library/State.
Read Also:
“We are not only thinking of the database, we want to have a repository of their thesis so that it will pass it to the libraries for reference purposes.”
Speaking on the reason for their visit, one of the scholars, Prof. Kinsley Nwozor, stated that they were there to appreciate TETfund for standing by them throughout the period of their studies.
He noted that even though some of them were tempted to stay back after their education, they have decided to come back to the nation to prove their mettle and showcase to the world that the dream of TETFund was a well-thought intention.
He said: “There is no national agency that has done what TETfund is doing in Nigeria. An investment of N185 billion is not a chicken change. It is time for us to look at innovative ways of making TETfund stand out. You have done so much with gigantic infrastructures in universities.
“We also believe that gigantic structures don’t make gigantic universities but gigantic minds. We are TETfund ambassadors whenever we are and with you by our side, there is nothing we cannot achieve.”
Executive secretary of TETfund promised to support the scholars wherever they needed help, adding the first point will be to develop a database that will have all the names of the beneficiaries and their areas of specialisation.
Echono said: “We want to count our blessings even beyond the scholars. You are only a vessel. You are a vehicle through which we achieve our primary aim of improving the quality of teaching and learning in the higher institutions and also promoting research and making the findings of those research touch the lives of our people.”
