President Muhammadu Buhari has approved N292.6billion for disbursement to publicly owned Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education as Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) 2021 interventions.
Breakdown of the figure indicated that each public university is allocated N906million while N628million was allocated to each Polytechnic and College of Education.
The Executive Secretary, TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, who disclosed the development at a meeting with the heads of beneficiary institutions in Abuja, yesterday, added that N8.5billion was reserved for special impact research and development.
He told the vice chancellors and heads of institutions that TETFund board of trustee has delisted some courses, especially non science courses in list of those that are qualified for grant for foreign capacity training.
He explained to them the processes that culminated in the approval of the budget by the President, thus urging the beneficiary institutions to judiciously use the fund for the betterment of the institutions.
He also highlighted other interventions in medical research, clinical purposes, human capital development, military hardware development, power, and several other areas needed for national development.
He was delighted that Nigeria is moving closer to an emergence of a National Research and Development Foundation, and challenged academics in the country to turn around the fortunes of the country through cutting-edge research.
He further appealed, “Let us apply our innovative research outcome to solve the security problem, and bring back value addition to the solid minerals that we are blessed with. It’s one gold, we have not explored to any significant level.”
On the 2021 research grants to lecturers, Bogoro called on the nation’s academics to live up to expectations by churning out good proposals, with reassurance that the Fund is ready to finance such academic exercise.
“I have signed the letters of allocation for the research grants that we are issuing out, 217. This is the highest research grant ever. It has never gone beyond 200. We have 217 research grants that have recently been approved,” Bogoro said.
Speaking on the recent special allocations by the TETFund’s Board of Trustees (BoT), Bogoro revealed that N5billion each was approved for University of Lagos (UNILAG) and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, for massive infrastructural projects’ development and upgrade of existing ones.
The TETFund boss also stated that N1billion was also approved for the fencing of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and another N1billion for Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo, adding that more tertiary institutions would benefit from the special allocations in not too distant time.