Mohammed Oluwatimileyin Taoheed reports,
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) on Friday said it has claimed that a whooping sum of N185 billion got expended to train 35,000 scholars in public tertiary institutions through its Scholarship for Academic Staff programme which commenced in 2008.
AbdulLahi Imam, the Acting Director of Academic Staff Training and Development at TETFund, made this known during the visit of the representatives of TETFund Scholars Alumni Steering Committee to the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, in Abuja.
The Director noted that the project was founded with a mission to train and accelerate the educational capacity of the academic staff of beneficiary institutions, stating also that the project is the second in expenditure after infrastructural projects of TETfund.
Imam explained that the alumni through its planned journals on issues like innovation and entrepreneurship, science, engineering and technology, art, humanities and social science would help to prevent or curtail intellectual flight.
Imam stated: “Next is the compilation of soft copies of their thesis in order to have a repository for the National Library/State.
“We are not only thinking of the database, we want to have a repository of their thesis so that it will pass it to the libraries for reference purposes.”
While giving the rationale for the visit, one of the scholars, Prof. Kinsley Nwozor, stated that they were there to appreciate TETfund for standing by them throughout the period of their studies.
He commented that even though some of them were tempted to stay back after their education, they have decided to come back to the nation to prove their mettle and showcase to the world that the dream of TETFund was a well-thought intention.
He said: “There is no national agency that has done what TETfund is doing in Nigeria. An investment of N185 billion is not a chicken change. It is time for us to look at innovative ways of making TETfund stand out. You have done so much with gigantic infrastructures in universities.
“We also believe that gigantic structures don’t make gigantic universities but gigantic minds. We are TETfund ambassadors whenever we are and with you by our side, there is nothing we cannot achieve.”
Executive secretary of TETfund promised to support the scholars wherever they needed help, adding the first point will be to develop a database that will have all the names of the beneficiaries and their areas of specialisation.
Echono said: “We want to count our blessings even beyond the scholars. You are only a vessel. You are a vehicle through which we achieve our primary aim of improving the quality of teaching and learning in the higher institutions and also promoting research and making the findings of those research touch the lives of our people.”
