Even as concerns over poor funding of the Ni¬geria’s education system continues to mount, it was revealed yesterday that a total of N62,647,033,895.93 meant to fund tertiary education were still lying in the banks unac-cessed by the institutions.
Nyesom Wike, supervising minister of education, who made the revelation at the ongoing 20th National Economic Sum¬mit (NES#20), said out of the N522,206,727,294.11 provided by the Federal Government for Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) between 2009 and 2013, only N456,559, 693,398.18 had been accessed as of end of last year.
Out of the total unaccessed funds, N35,154,706,573.59 belong to the universities, N13,343,229,654.39 to the poly¬technics, while the remaining N18,149, 097, 667. 95 is for colleges of education.
The funds administered and delivered by TETFund to public tertiary institutions are derived from the 2 percent education tax paid from the assessable profits of private companies operating in the country.
In his presentation, titled “Transforming Education in Ni¬geria: Implications for the Future,” the minister said a major chal¬lenge to accessing the funds had been inability of some tertiary institutions to meet laid down
conditions.
According to the minister, another major challenge is that the TETFund, on its part, does not have all the human resources required to effectively monitor the projects being executed in the institutions, a situation that often leads to delays in release of the funds.
The minister’s presentation pointed to suggestions that fund¬ing may not be the key challenge of Nigeria’s education system, a position most of the summit participants alluded to. Some of the participants noted that the quality of teachers, content of school curriculum, political will of the leaders, attitude of even the teachers as change agents, among other many factors, were key to improving the education system.
He said, for instance, in ad¬dition to the funds released through TETFund, another N94,129,527,348 was released to federal universities through the National Universities Commission (NUC) for capital, direct teaching and laboratory cost, and teaching and research equipment.
This is aside the $10 million spent on the Nigerian Research and Education Network under the STEP-B World Bank assisted project.
The education minister dis¬closed that under the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for innovation and development, the Federal Government invested about N1,692,203,021, for sponsor¬ship of Masters and PhD students
in top 25 universities in the world.
He disclosed that for the sec¬ond edition, which spans through the 2013 and 2014 academic ses¬sion, another set of 100 scholars were expected to benefit from the scheme with government spend¬ing additional N1,692,203,021, under the scheme.
The minister also told the participants that 10 Nigerian uni¬versities that won slots to benefit from the World Bank Assisted Centres of Excellence Project re¬ceived $10 million each.
The project, according to him, is a World Bank special initiative to assist universities in central and West African sub-regions to en¬gage in research of various needs.
Reading out performance of the tertiary institutions in view of these huge investments, he said the number of universities in the country increased from 101 in 2009 to 129 in 2013, with a notable increase in school enrolment.
He said a total of 840,166 stu¬dents were enrolled in 2009, and that by 2012, the number had gone up to 987,911, representing an increase of 17.6 percent in en¬rolment, saying despite recorded achievements, there were chal¬lenges that keep recurring at the tertiary education level.
The challenges, according to him, include huge gap between the extant programmes of tertia¬ry institutions and requirements needed for the deliver on those.
He also raised the issue of epi¬leptic academic calendar in the tertiary institutions occasioned by the industrial strike actions by staff unions.
Having outlined these chal¬lenges, he recommended that there would be need to close the existing gaps between the extant programmes of the uni¬versities and the requirements in the industry by establishing closer relationship as well as forming synergies and partner¬ships in addressing the issues involved.
He also advised, among other things, that tertiary institutions should strengthen their capacity to be able to meet up with the conditions laid down for accessing the TETFund.
