At least ₦1.8 trillion has been set aside by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for a range of projects and intervention initiatives in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions between 2011 and 2024. The ₦919 billion goes to universities, ₦461 billion to polytechnics, and ₦459 billion to education colleges. Executive Secretary Sonny Echono described the TETFund’s establishment under the TETFund Act 2011 as a means of delivering transformative interventions through content-based programs and Infrastructure development in his 41st convocation talk at Olabisi Onabanjo University.
Resources are distributed among the colleges in a 2:1:1 ratio by the fund, which manages a 3% education Tax collected from registered businesses. According to Echono, the TETFund has carried out more than 152,838 infrastructure projects, ranging from the creation of senate buildings, lecture halls, dormitories and labs to upgrades to the power, water and road systems. Furthermore, the TETFund has funded countless local and international conferences and workshops, as well as hundreds of lecturers and academic staff for Ph.D. and master’s programs both domestically and abroad.
Nigerian higher education has benefited from TETFund’s involvement.
By improving teaching, research, and Innovation quality, these efforts hope to make Nigeria’s universities more competitive internationally. Additionally, he pointed out that other nations have implemented such strategies for raising money for the education sector. Nigerian Higher Education has seen considerable advancements as a result of the TETFund’s involvement. For instance, state universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education carried out more than 152,838 infrastructure projects between 2011 and 2021. These projects included everything from upgraded ICT facilities to contemporary lecture halls and labs. Improved learning environments as a result of this enormous expenditure have led to quantifiable gains in research Productivity and academic achievement.
According to studies conducted in South East Nigeria, TETFund-sponsored PhD and master’s training programs have helped thousands of professors. One study found that these capacity-building efforts resulted in statistically significant increases in both research output and teaching quality. The TETFund has prioritised creating human capacity in addition to physical infrastructure. Case examples, like those at Bayero University in Kano, show how better access to state-of-the-art labs, online resources, and ongoing Professional Development has raised the bar for innovation and research.
“Without TETFund, we would not have any university in Nigeria.”
Recipients often attest to these benefits; one stakeholder stated, “Without TETFund, we would not have any university in Nigeria,” highlighting the model’s pivotal role in changing educational results. Around the world, the TETFund model is renowned for its creative strategy of using education tax funds to fund postsecondary education. Similar initiatives have attempted to allocate a predetermined portion of business profits to education in nations like Ghana and India, however Nigeria’s system is still one of the most extensive in sub-Saharan Africa.
This strategy contributes to the TETFund model’s worldwide applicability and efficacy by fostering public-private collaborations in addition to guaranteeing a consistent supply of funding. Even with these achievements, there are still a number of issues. There have been reports of misappropriation of special intervention money on occasion, bureaucratic obstacles, and delays in grant release. For instance, ineffective project monitoring and sponsored scholars’ failure to return have been identified in a number of studies. To address this, TETFund intends to improve its internal monitoring mechanisms.
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To improve Sustainability and accountability, it also intends to evaluate Tax Collection policies (including suggestions to boost smaller businesses’ payments) and fortify relationships with beneficiary institutions. In the future, TETFund hopes to build on these successes by increasing the amount of money it provides for innovation and research. Future objectives include creating specialised research facilities, enhancing openness through frequent public reports, and strengthening partnerships with other organisations (such Horizon Europe) in order to increase Nigeria’s competitiveness in higher education worldwide. It is anticipated that these actions will not only fix existing issues but also establish new standards for financing education in developing nations.