The House of Representatives committee on Tertiary Education Trust Fund(TETFUND) has frowned at the high rate of unassessed intervention funds by public institutions who are beneficiaries of the TETFund.
Chairperson of the Committee, Hon. Mariam Onuoha, who disclosed the Committee’s displeasure during its oversight function to the Fund , stated that the institutions’ action was not in the interest of Nigeria and the education sector.
She, therefore, urged state governors to prevail on the heads of the tertiary institutions within their states to access the funds.
“We will rather the state governors use their instrumentality of office to ensure that heads of state owned tertiary institutions benefitting from the TETFund intervention to comply with this simplified or guided expedited steps to accessing the Funds,” she said.
She explained that the constitution empowers the house to embark on oversight duties to ensure that the allocation made and the interventions given to government agencies are used judiciously.
“This committee is here in furtherance to those provisions to ensure that the allocations being made to the TETFund is used judiciously. It is also to go alongside the 2021, 2022, 2023 budget performance of the TETFund to see how it has run its affairs so far and to further direct its affairs going forward,” she stated.
Responding to the issue of the unassessed funds, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono noted that the Fund was also pained on the issue especially given the inflationary trend.
“The more you delay in the utilisation of these interventions, the less value you can get from it. We have tried from our side. There has been significant improvement compared to the previous year but they are not doing enough.
“We expected this year to be better because we started early as we got approval since December. January, we have already given them allocation letters but some of them are still used to waiting until May, June to begin to apply,” he said.
Echono said that the Fund had organised workshops for the beneficiary institutions in collaboration with the Bureau for Public Procurement so as to explain to them how to meet the requirement for accessing the funds but added that some of the institutions are still not complying.
“We want you to help us scold them too. Unfortunately many of them are state institutions. Some of the Rectors or Provosts don’t even have access. For the last two months, you are looking for the Commissioner to be able to carry your case to get approval. We have been appealing, encouraging and threatening,” he said.
Echono, who presented a submission containing intervention details to beneficiary institutions for the years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, noted that the period under review witnessed a significant transformation.
“It has also witnessed a remarkable rise in the education tax collections, partly due to the increase of Education Tax (EDT) from 2.5 percent to 3 percent that took effect September of last year. A lot of the improvement has to do with the efficiency of collection and expansion of incidence,” he said.
He also attributed the improvement and increase to the Fund’s collaboration with the Federal Inland Revenue Service which improved the efficiency of the collection of the taxes.
” As at 2020, the Fund collection was N257bn, by 2021, there was a sharp decline of 130 percent to N189.5bn. but in 2022, these rose to N328.8bn and an impressive N725bn in 2023,” he stated.
He assured that TETFund’s commitment for infrastructural development has been unwavering, adding that from 2020 to 2023, a total amount of N1.45tn was disbursed to institutions.