The Chairman, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and Board of Trustees, Kashim Ibrahim Imam, has said N116 billion has been expended on academic staff training and development for 30,000 scholars.
According to him, the scholars across universities, colleges of education and polytechnics were also given support for their Masters and PhD degrees programmes between 2008 and 2020.
Imam stated this at the weekend in Damaturu, Yobe State while on an assessment tour of higher educational institutions in Borno and Yobe states.
While announcing beneficiaries from the two states, TETFund’s Director of Academic Staff Training and Development, Mohammed Sulaiman said about 2,789 scholars from Borno and Yobe bagged masters and doctorate degrees at the cost of about N5.3 billion.
He added that the scholars completed their degree programmes in the last 12 years in Nigeria and foreign universities.
The director noted that N300 billion earmarked for special intervening projects was to complement sourced funds from federal and state governments.
On challenges of training, a beneficiary, Dr Sabo Dagona, said the rise in foreign exchange rates to pound or dollar needs to be addressed.
“There is no parity between TETFund’s paid fees to universities and current foreign exchange rates to either U.S dollar or British pound,” he said.
He urged the fund to regularly review scholarship awards to students under the training programme, noting that it was the Yobe State University (YSU) that offset his tuition fees and other training expenses to complete PhD in Clinical Psychology in the United Kingdom.
While responding to fluctuations in exchange rates, Sulaiman urged institutions to open domiciliary accounts with banks.
Speaking on the way forward, Vice Chancellor, Yobe State University, Professor Mala Daura, said: “We should continue to support scholars by looking inwards to train them in various fields of research and development.”
He said scholars after their training should be exposed to meet global standards in research and development. “Laboratories and other research facilities could be upgraded to meet global standards,” he added.
Other projects to be executed with TETFunds included the Centre for Arid Zone Studies, Website, Innovative and ICT centres at the cost of N4 billion.
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