The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has stated as false allegations by some scholars of being omitted in the bailout approved by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for stranded TETFund scholars abroad.
The Fund stated this in a statement on Friday signed by its Director, Public Affairs, Abdulmumin Oniyangi for the Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono.
TETFund specifically mentioned the case of one Kamal Adewole Saka, a lecturer at Federal University, Oye Ekiti, who it said was awarded a TETFund scholarship for Ph.D. in Psychology at Girne American University, Cyprus and who has lately been in the media wrongly accusing the Fund of “embezzling his N10m scholarship grant”.
It, however, stated that Saka’s full tuition had been paid directly to the institution since November 3, 2022.
“In the case of Kamal Adewole Saka, he was awarded the scholarship to Girne American University on 11th November, 2020 in the total sum of N27,573,350.00.
“His approved tuition fees of Euros 8,872.50 has been paid to Girne American University as at 3rd November, 2022, almost two years ago; while his upkeep and other allowances amounting to N23,846,900.00 was disbursed in full to his home institution, Federal University Oye Ekiti in 2020 in line with the extant schedules.
“The tuition fees of Kamal Adewole Saka were paid in two tranches based on invoices sent by the scholar: Euros 5,250 on 11th February , 2021 and Euros 3,622.50 on 1st April, 2021. However, the scholar notified the Fund in 2022 of non-receipt of the first tranche and after investigations with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the bank notified us that the payment failed. A fresh invoice was requested from Mr. Saka and this was used to re-process the payment of Euros 5,250.00,” it said.
The Fund stated that it has evidence of payment and status of the scholar’s account from Girne American University, showing that tuition fees have been fully paid as at 3rd November, 2022.
“The Fund has already made a formal report to the Management of Federal University, Oye Ekiti on Mr. Kamal Adewole Saka’s inappropriate behaviour and defamatory and libelous publication and has demanded appropriate sanctions, failing which the Fund would not hesitate to seek redress on its own.
“While TETFund remains committed to ensuring smooth academic pursuits of its scholars, it is important to restate that TETFund Guidelines on the TSAS programme clearly stipulate the appropriate channel for addressing scholars’ plights, which is through their home institutions that nominated them in the first instance and not any other platform. It is also worthy of note that the Fund will continue to support eligible scholars to pursue their academic programmes irrespective of some seemingly deliberate smear campaigns by a handful aimed at distracting us from this onerous endeavour,” it said.