…Says TETFund Has Commenced Move To Address Challenge
The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Arc. Sonny Echono has lamented that some universities in the country were being charged between N300 million to N400 million as electricity bill in one month.
Echono who was speaking at a meeting with a delegation of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) led by Its National President, Comrade Lucky Emonefe, in Abuja, wondered how the institutions can cope if there is no urgent intervention.
He therefore disclosed that TETFund has commenced conversations and held a meeting with people from the Ministry of Power to find a way to address the issue of power supply in tertiary schools.
“It’s going to be one of the major issues we are going to look at when we call our major stakeholders meeting of all heads of schools. We have to put our heads together to see how we need to have alternative power sources that will reduce the burden,” he said.
Echono therefore disclosed that the fund has commenced the construction of 36 modern hostel facilities in tertiary institutions in 2024 and has been given the directive by the president to increase them to 72 in 2025.
“This year we are doing about 36 of them and are at various stages; many of them have fulfilled procurement circle. Others are being done through PPP. I was there to launch the one in Akwa Ibom and I have been informed that three others are ready to commence.
“But the good news is that Mr President has directed that we intensify this. So instead of doing 36, next year we’ll be doing 72,” he said.
He also noted that after raising the issue of campus transportation with the president, he directed the fund to work with relevant agencies to convert existing buses to CNG and provide mass transit buses for students in campus as part of TETFund’s intervention for next year.
Ahead of the planned nationwide protest, Echono charged the students to be on the watch out in all campuses and protect school infrastructure by during the planned national protest to ensure that hoodlums do not infiltrate the campuses to cause havoc.
“I am enjoining you today to please be on the watch out in all your campuses. All our TETFund assets, all the buildings that taxpayers money has been used to provide; not only should you ensure that you protect them, please nobody should go and destroy them.
“Let us not give chances to these hoodlums who will take advantage of your legitimate demands to cause havoc,” he said.
Earlier while stating the reason for their visit, the National President of NANS, Emonefe, noted that the leadership of NANS has resolved not to go on a national protest because it has realised that most of the interventions the students were enjoying were not gotten through protests.
“If we protest, we will not get results, things will be destroyed, our academic calendar will be obstructed, and we’ll spend more years in school, we don’t want that.
“We want to set up a committee to ensure that those who want to use our students and mobilise them in our campuses are monitored. Those who want to infiltrate our campuses, we are not going to accept, they cannot use us,” the NANS president said.
He also expressed delight at TETFund’s proposed intervention in power, describing it as an issue which is very important to Nigerian students.
He appealed to TETFund to, as part of its intervention in the subsector, build a befitting Secretariat for Nigerian students and support agricultural projects for universities in which students can be engaged and institutions can generate funds to fund themselves.