By Oyindamola Adeyemi
The award presentation which was held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, was part of the activities organised to mark TETFund’s one decade of transformative intervention in public tertiary institutions.he Tertiary Education Trust Fund has honoured Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for championing the establishment of the Fund, and other tertiary institutions from six different zones of the country, which included Bayero University Kano, University of Ilorin, for their outstanding performance in the utilization of TETFund’s National Research Fund.
While the Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, Professor Sagir Adamu Abbas personally received his university’s award, the Vice-Chancellor of University of Ilorin, Prof. Sulyman Age Abdulkareem, was represented by the University Librarian, Prof. Abdulwahab Olanrewaju Issa, who received the award on behalf of the University.
The University of Ilorin, which has received several awards in recent time, was the only University which got the award in the North Central geopolitical zone.
Meanwhile, Prof. Abdulkareem has said that the institution is a great beneficiary of the intervention agency’s support in infrastructural development, academic research, and human capacity development in the last one decade.
Prof. Abdulkareem made this in an interview with journalists on the sideline of an event to mark the Fund’s 10th anniversary in Abuja.
Represented by the University Librarian, Prof. Issa, the Vice-Chancellor described the ten years existence of the Fund as a good thing to the nation’s institutions of higher learning, especially the University of Ilorin.
The Vice-Chancellor, said “For tertiary institutions in this country in general, and in particular, the University of Ilorin, we are a great benefactor of the largesse from TETFund over the last 10 years and these are very evident in the structures and the capacity building, that is, the human capacity building and several other areas. If you go into the area of infrastructural development, this has been very significant because every of its infrastructural facility in the University bears the name TETFund”.
Commenting on how the University benefitted in the realm of human capacity development, the University administrator said many staff of the University had had the opportunity of going for their Masters and Ph.D. programmes on TETfund scholarship. He added that many of them also attended conferences every year and participated in manuscript development, among other benefits, on the sponsorship of the intervention agency.
Speaking in his capacity as a University Librarian, Prof. Issa said that he can discuss with confidence the impact of TETFund intervention in library development, saying, “For me as a University Librarian, I can tell you that evidently, the University of Ilorin’s Library had benefited significantly from the largesse of TETFUND. The 2015-2018 library intervention that I heard was about N134 million Naira. Presently, I have received approval in principle for 2019/2020 and that is to the tune of N75 million”.
He, however, wished that TETFund would continue to support the advancement of higher learning activities in Nigerian institutions, adding that continuous intervention such as the TETFund would continue to play a great role in the life of an institution such as the University of Ilorin.