By Waziri Isa Adam
The Chairman, Board of Trustees of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Alhaji Kashim Ibrahim Imam, has disclosed that the Fund will spend not less than N300 billion to address Five critical areas of Intervention in 2021.
The Board Chairman made the disclosure Tuesday at Le Meridian Dubai Hotel, United Arab Emirates, venue for the ongoing edition of 2020 “Training of Trainers on Research Project Management and writing Skills Capacity Building Workshop” which the Fund organizes yearly for Academics from selected Public Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria.
The Board Chairman identified the critical areas to include: (1) Facilitation of the completion of E-learning Structures in 25 Universities across the country, (2) Provision of 2000 bed space accommodation for students in 25 Universities in the country, and (3), Provision of 24/7 stable Power Supply across all Public Tertiary Institutions in the country. To achieve this laudable and unprecedented ambition, Alhaji Kashim revealed that N6b has already been earmarked for that.
The Fund’s other two critical areas are completion of the construction of Abuja National Library Project which was abandoned 16 years ago by previous governments, and synergizing with competent financial consultants to generate, with the active support of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), a whopping sum of N500 billion in the year 2022.
Speaking on Research and Development project which is the brainchild of the Fund’s Executive Secretary, Professor Suleiman Elias Bogoro, the Board Chairman reiterated that the Fund will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that the R&D Project becomes the livewire and main source for the provision of wealth and fortunes for Nigeria.
Speaking earlier at the venue of the ongoing workshop, the Executive Secretary thanked the Nigerian government for giving him and the Fund the opportunity to uplift the standard of the nation’s Public Tertiary Institutions and offer the best trainings to Nigerian Academics.
He also thanked the Board Chairman and his members, without whose support, the Fund couldn’t have achieved what it is soon going to celebrate in its 10-year success story.
He also thanked all participants of the Workshop who were drawn from different Public Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria, and facilitators of the program for abandoning their comfort zone in far away United Kingdom to come to Dubai to train Nigerian Scholars.
Speaking earlier, the Fund’s Director of Research and Development/Centres of Excellence, Dr Salihu Girei Bakari, thanked both the Chairman and the Executive Secretary for their passion and commitment to ensure that the Fund succeeds in achieving its mandate.
He revealed that the workshop which was supposed to hold last year (2020) in the United Kingdom, could not, due to the ravaging COVID-19 Pandemic, hence the reason for holding it late in January 2021 and at the United Arab Emirates.