THURSDAY 4 AUGUST 2016-To achieve the grand ambition of better funding of higher education in Nigeria, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND, initially set up as Education Trust Fund-ETF-will require close scrutiny of its accounting and disbursement process which many in the academia now consider a crooked endeavour.
With university education in general decline, some university dons are questioning not only the legitimacy of the Fund but also the formula with which it allocates money for conference attendance and research intervention without recourse to the federal revenue allocation formula.
“How do they decide what and how much goes to where?” one visibly angry don queried when G&B Journal sought his views. “No one is particularly accountable, no one holds TETFUND accountable but everyone responsible for collecting and disbursing money from the Fund must be held accountable.”
Our investigation reveal that no one except the custodians of the funds knows how much is in the fund today. Much of the Fund for now is available for conferences and research through calls for proposals. When such proposals are made an award is made to those they regard as having ‘fundable’ research. There is a standing research committee that evaluates submissions. Even the amount awarded is directly communicated to recipients and grantees.
“If the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, gets to know how much is in TETFUND, no one knows what they will do” says one Law lecturer at the University of Ibadan who spoke on anonymity. “ASUU should make efforts to know. I don’t think anyone has asked from within the ranks but those who know are just cowed. Absolutely, there are accountability issues. The accounts of public agencies should not be shrouded in secrecy.” The law lecture says he does not subscribe to money being shared by universities because it will eventually translate to ‘money for the boys.’
Educationists have been pushing for a holistic approach to funding tertiary education in the country for ages. Their voice was first heard in the 1980s when quality of education and infrastructure in public institutions at all levels, (university, polytechnic and colleges of education) began a rapid downward slide. Ex-president Ibrahim Babaginda, gave the first measured response to funding the institutions when he signed into law in January 1993, the Education Tax Act No7 of 1993 and created the education fund in the process. The Fund was designed as an intervention Fund to all levels of public education at federal, state and local levels.
The Act followed the extensive work done by a commission constituted in December 1990 and led by Gray Longe. Among the commissions brief was to review the post independence Nigeria higher education after the Lord Ashby’s commission of 1959. In other words, the first commission set up after over three decades to review the state of the country’s education system. It was the Longe led commission that recommended the funding of higher education through earmarked 2 percent tax to be paid by companies operating in Nigeria after three years of deliberation. Another committee was set up and headed by Professor Olu O. Akinkugbe to implement the Longe recommendations. An agreement was also reached between the federal government and ASSU on the 3rd of September, 1992 on universities funding. The Act was subsequently replaced in May 2011 by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act following what the Fund itself described as “lapses and challenges in operating the Education Trust Fund.”
TETFUND on their website suggested the reason why the ETF was jettisoned was because they were, firstly, “overburdened and overstretched and could only render palliative support to all levels of public education institutions in Nigeria.” It also identified Funds duplicating the work of the ETF such as the Universal Basic Education Fund and the Millennium Development Goal, MDG, as well as the rapidly decaying facilities in tertiary institutions which also pressured the Fund.
Some observers say however, that the failure of the ETF was deeply rooted in the opaque manner it was operating, something that the new TETFUND has inherited and consequently still unable to fund well enough the needs of the tertiary institutions despite the regular annual budgetary allocations and the huge sums accruing from the 2 percent levied on Nigerian companies which many believes is in excess of N500 billion annually given their huge number.
Of course, some institutions that have received grants and funding have always made concerted efforts to publish what is disbursed to them but none have publicly said how much they each received.
In February 2015, the chairman of the Exams and Ethics Marshal International told the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, correspondent that the TETFUND disbursed N150 billion in two years to tertiary institutions in the country. Earlier in December 2014, the then minister of education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau announced that N912 million was disbursed to each university from the TETFUND for 2014. He said each polytechnics got N661 million each while the colleges of education was expected to receive N581 million. Bulk of these monies according our source ended up as conference attendance intervention or CA which does not in any way address the immediate needs of the institutions but the pockets of the recipients.
For instance, in May 14 2016, the Benue State University Markudi, spent N15.802 million from the TETFUND on staff to attend conferences in Canada, Ghana and countries in Asia and South America. The recipients were paid various sums ranging from N800, 602 to N1.517 million for the ‘joy ride’. Again, most of the institutions have made attempts to publicise or put into public domain these types of expenditure but nobody knows or has seen how much is paid to recipients of the Research Intervention, RI, awarded for research projects.
While these junketing are now familiar rituals in Nigerian universities the latest ritual is non payment of staff salaries despite the TETFUND and annual budgetary allocations. The University of Ibadan staff, as at press time, are still on strike over shortfall in salaries of all staff since January 2016.
“The funny thing is that no one knows how much of his or her salary is with held every month,” says our source. “You saw what happened at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, (South West Nigeria) were a substantive vice chancellor, VC, was rejected on grounds the he was only appointed to cover up fraudulent activities of the out-going VC and the subsequent disbanding of the governing council.”
He says that a host of the VCs have fraudulently enriched themselves through these Funds to the detriment of the institutions and also soiled the hands of the ASUU hierarchy.
“That is why they (ASUU) kept quiet when the Ife saga unfolded” he said.
Another source told G&B Journal that the major problems of education in the country are caused by these types of fraudulent university administrators.
“They muzzle up any staff with knowledge of their under hand dealings and that is why I have always advocated sending of task force into the tertiary institutions rather than the often compromising visitation panels who end up in the university guest house as guest to the VC or rector etc.” He said.
He called their visits a yearly accreditation visit and a poverty alleviation trip by professors who have passed their prime. In all of the visits, faculties and courses are fully accredited even when they should not have been allowed to float such courses, he said. “They do not care about human capital development (training students to drive the economy) or care about providing enabling or conducive environment for critical and productive research. That is why it is important for the task force to go there find and find out why the quality of education is really that bad and that is why there has to be a revisit of the TETFUND for transparency.”
