Recently, the Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono, has announced that the fund is set to disburse a total of N18 billion to six public universities under its Special High Impact Intervention.
This was disclosed during a briefing in Abuja on Thursday by Echono who gave the breakdown on the 2023 Intervention Budget of N320 billion, recently approved by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said N3 billion will be given to six selected varsities, N1billion each to six polytechnics and six colleges of education across the country, while over 95 per cent of the N320 billion total TETFund’s disbursement of 2023 would go directly to beneficiary tertiary institutions.
Echono revealed that the remaining five per cent of the allocation would be used for staff salaries and allowances, project monitoring and zonal capital projects.
According to him, 62 per cent of the total disbursement (representing N198 billion) constituted the institutions’ annual direct disbursement, while 20 per cent of the disbursement (representing N64.2 billion) would be used for special disbursement.
The Special Intervention is usually at the discretion of the Board of Trustees for which allocations are zonal-based and are done equitably by the decision of the Board as enshrined in the enabling Act.
To this end, the Special High Impact Intervention, according to Echono seeks to massively inject funds into selected tertiary institutions to achieve a major turnaround through Programme Upgrade and Improvement in the teaching and learning Environment.
While noting that beneficiaries are also selected based on the age of the institution per geo-political zones of Nigeria among other criteria.