President Buhari Approves Funds for Varsities Amid ASUU Strike.
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the 2022 disbursement proposals and guidelines for public higher institutions across the country.
The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arch. Sunday Echono, disclosed this while receiving the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU) in Abuja on Thursday 5 May.
Arch. Echono said the meeting of all beneficiary institutions will be held by next week to interact more on the proposed reforms that have been approved for implementatio. He also assured the Vice Chancellors of TeTFund’s commitment to sustain the ongoing reforms in the sector, particularly in the areas of research, ICT and encouraging a reading culture in our society through publication of books.
“We are confident that once this is accomplished it will not only provide open learning resources for researchers and students who want to access previous works done in their respective areas of research but also promote a culture of academic excellence,” he said.
Echono noted that one of the problems of Nigeria’s education is the quality of graduates, particularly the quality of thesis, saying, “Many students plagiarize peoples work”.
In his words: “We believe in anti-plagiarism device as you have developed will go a long way in dictating this and ensuring compliance. Indeed, we have adopted a policy in TETFund that going forward, all proposals coming to us must go through your system and receive certification that it has passed a minimum standard that is required and for all publishers and authors before it can benefit from our support.”
He also complained about the amount of resources being spent in sending children abroad for studies, he then urged Varsities, especially private ones to create a comfortbale environment for students and compete with the Universities abroad in order to save cost and discourage students from travelling abroad for studies.
The chairman of the CVC, Prof Samuel Gowon Edoumiekumo, said CVCNU is working closely with the TetFund to deploy the thesis digitisation for Nigerian tertiary institutions and to improve the research capabilities of staff and students and to help build the capacity of academic staff for generating content, especially video and 3-Dimensional images, to support teaching.
