Tertiary Education Trust Fund said it invested N12 billion in training researchers across twelve universities in Nigeria in the year 2021 as part of the agency’s mandate of funding the educational sector in the country.
The Chairman, Board of Trustees of TETFUND, Kashim Imam, made this disclosure on Monday in Maiduguri during an interactive forum with a theme: “improving education tax collection in the post-pandemic era” organised to improve education tax remittance through the Federal inland Revenue Service.
In his welcome address, Kashim Imam stated that TETFUND has ongoing projects in 226 institutions out of the 245 higher institutions in the country.
He listed some of the projects to include laboratories, engineering workshops, lecture theaters, and lecture halls among other infrastructural projects are among the one hundred thousand projects being undertaken in the 2021 intervention funds.
“There are 226 higher institutions where we are undertaking one hundred thousand projects from the 2021 intervention fund of TETFUND. These projects are funded from the revenue we generate in the year 2021.
We had a revenue target of five hundred billion naira but we could only realise two hundred billion naira out of which we are using to fund these projects in the Nigerian Universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.
“Borno State alone has seven tertiary institutions and we have projects ongoing in these seven institutions including the newly established federal polytechnic Monguno whom we gave a takeoff grant of two billion naira.”
He added, “Apart from infrastructures and physical projects, we also sponsor academics and fund research works. As at the year 2021, we invested twelve billion naira to fund research in twelve Universities, one billion naira per University.
“We have also given scholarships to lecturers to further their studies for masters and PhD programs but we have resolved as an agency and duly informed the vice-chancellors of the universities that it does not make sense to spend money training lecturers abroad when we can use that money to better our education institutions.
“So we only send lecturers abroad for studies when the specialty is not available in Nigerian Universities or on unique specialties. Kashim added.
Also speaking, the FIRS Coordinating Director, Tax Operating Group, Kabir Abba, said the agency has devised new strategies to improve the tax collection and that the service will ensure all taxable companies and contractors remit their taxes before being considered for award of contracts in any of the tertiary institutions across the country.