TETFund approves 2022 interventions for tertiary institutions | EduCeleb
EduCeleb
8th May 2022
The Nigerian government’s foremost higher education funder, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has approved the 2022 intervention funds for public tertiary institutions across the country.
TETFund Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono disclosed this during a meeting with the leadership of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU) at the headquarter of the agency in Abuja.
Echono said a meeting of all beneficiary institutions will hold on May 9, 2022 to discuss some of the proposed reforms approved for implementation.
He assured the vice-chancellors of the agency’s commitment to sustain the ongoing reforms in the sector, with increased emphasis on the content of its interventions particularly in the areas of research, ICT and in the areas of encouraging a reading culture in our society through publication of books.
Echono said: “On the issue of support, I’m pleased to inform you that His Excellency Mr President has just approved the 2022 disbursement proposals and guidelines and the meeting of all beneficiary institutions will be held by next week Monday to interact further and briefly, including some of the proposed reforms that have been approved for implementation.
“At the heart of this is the issue of journals. We are keen and determined to ensure that publications are useful, relevant and are also current that can be cited anywhere in the world.
“We have existing partnerships, particularly the digitisation of Thesis. We are confident that once this is accomplished it will not only provide open learning resources for researchers and students who want to access previous works done in their respective areas of research but also promote a culture of academic excellence.
“One of the problems of our education today is the quality of our graduates, particularly the quality of their thesis. Many students plagiarise peoples work.
“We believe an anti – plagiarism device as you have developed will go a long way in dictating this and ensuring compliance. Indeed, we have adopted a policy in TETFund that going forward, all proposals coming to us must go through your system and receive certification that it has passed a minimum standard that is required and for all publishers and authors before it can benefit from our support.”
He also lamented the amount of resources being spent in sending children abroad for studies, urging universities, especially private ones, to create a niche and compete with foreign universities that are attracting out students in order to save cost.
Chairman of the CVC, Prof Samuel Edoumiekumo, expressed confidence that Echono will con tinue with the trajectories of the past leadership and introduce new vistas that will add value to higher education provisioning in the country.
The CVCNU called for review of the funding support to beneficiary institutions to access tier one journals and repositories to improve the research capabilities of staff and students and to also help build the capacity of academic staff for generating content, especially video and 3-Dimensional images to support teaching.