Samuel Torlumun
The Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Fund, TETFund has bemoaned the growing inadequacy of fund for tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Elizabeth Evoh-Gardner, a Professor representing the executive secretary, stated this on Tuesday, which was day two of TELL’s tertiary education forum held in Abuja.
Evoh-Gardner blamed the development on the establishment of additional public and private schools in the country.
The TETFund boss added that it has become obvious government alone can’t fund education, so tertiary institutions need to evolve strategies to generate funds through partnerships.
TETFund, Evoh-Gardner said, can only intervene to fill the gap and stabilize the higher educational institutions. “Possible sources of alternative and sustainable funding in the 21st century include research and consultancy services, alumni associations, endowment funds and donations.”
Olufemi Bamiro, a professor and pro-chancellor, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ogun State, who is one of the guest speakers at the event, said higher institution leaders must manage resource inflow and outflow so that core academic issues can be prioritized.
“It is not enough to say we are having short fall, universities should have a system that will manage their resources, a resource planning model. Basically what I am proposing for us to move on, is for us to plan our resources, we have to manage the resources coming in and monitor the resources going out,” he said.
His views were not different from that of Mairiga Usman, a representative of the National Commission for Colleges of Education, who opined that time was ripe for tertiary institutions to reduce their dependence on government and create more fund raising options.
One of the ways of doing that, he said, is that institutions should create value for the programmes they offer so that they can attract private sector investments.
There were two plenary sessions chaired by Rahamon Bello, a professor and vice-chancellor, University of Lagos, and Duro Ajegbemi, Coordinator, Joint Universities Examination Board, respectively.
The forum was attended by members of the academia, public servants and the civil society. Sunny Maji, a lawyer and secretary of Coalition of Professionals for Good Governance and productivity, a nongovernmental organization, told the magazine that if the submissions made at the summit were implemented, it would rescue the Nigerian education system from the current downward slide.
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