Lagos State government has called for more funding from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND, for state-owned universities.
It also emphasised the need to make the intervention fund more accessible.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu made the appeal while receiving some members of the House of Representatives Committee on TEDFUND at the Lagos House, Ikeja.
The committee was led by the Chairman, Mrs Miriam Onuoha.
The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, reports that TETFUND was established as Education Trust Fund by the Act No. 7 of 1993 as amended by Act No. 40 of 1998 (now repealed and replaced with Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act 2011).
The governor commended the committee for its commitment to identifying and resolving gaps and issues regarding over N4.5 billion intervention fund for Lagos State tertiary institutions.
“Our Lagos State Polytechnic which is now, by the approval of the NUC, Lagos State University of Science and Technology, has since metamorphosed into a university and our college of education, is now Lagos State University Education.
“Because the two of them are now full university, we need additional funding for them.
” By the time you come next year, we will have an additional institution, university of medicine. We need to produce more doctors and nurses,” Sanwo-Olu said.
Chairman of House Committee on TETFUND, Onuoha, said that over N200 billion from 2017-2023 was unaccessed by tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
She said that the development informed the oversight visit to resolve impediments to enable the affected institutions to access the funds to bridge infrastructure gap and guard against education tourism.
“We need to inform tertiary institutions about the accumulated unaccessed TETTFUND intervention.
”The committee embarked on its annual oversight to the TETTFUND agency.
“In the cause of our job, we found out that some institutions were behind in accesssing TETTFUND intervention.
“We have resolved to make the process of accessing this funds less cumbersome.
Lagos State Commissioner for Tertiary Education, Mr Tolani Sule, commended the committee for making the process of accessing the funds less difficult.
”We are grateful to the TETFUND committee chairman and her colleagues for coming to our state and going round our nation to see why most of our institutions are not accessing the funds fully.
”From the conversation we have had here today, we have seen that there are some regulations, TETFUND law, that made the access a bit difficult, and they have assured us that we will go back and have a meeting and see how the regulations can be relaxed.
”There is no institutions that will not want to take advantage of assistance, but where regulations are making it difficult, they won’t be able to meet up,” Sule said. (NAN)
