When TETFund, Ministry received c’ttee reports on Centres of Excellence, Skills dev’t
•Some centres fail milestones to access fund - Echono •Reports major policy shift in education – Minister
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and Ministry of Education on Friday received the reports of the ad hoc committees on Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence and Operationalisation of Skills Development Special Intervention.
The reports were presented to the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, alongside the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arch Sonny Echono, by the Lead of the committees.
Presenting the reports, the Lead of the Committee on Assessment/Review of TETFund Centres of Excellence, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, said there is need for a review of the strategic guidelines for the Centre of Excellence. They, however, did not recommend any centre for upgrade.
The committee recommended that the Fund should ensure that all funds for the Centre of Excellence are disbursed directly to the centre’s account.
Tomori said most centres did not utilise their first seed grant of N150 million for the initial infrastructures required in them, and advised TETFund to provide some bailout funds to the centres to enable the proper take-off of the centres.
“If the centres are to achieve set objectives, TETFund in collaboration with institutions hosting the centres should ensure that centre directors are on full-time assignment at the centre,” he said.
On performance, he said, “All centres that are not performing well should be given six months moratorium as a way to prevail on them to refocus and achieve their true mandate after which a revisit will be conducted to determine their status and continued funding.”
Other recommendations by the committee include TETFund identifying the areas needing technological advancement and capacity building for national development for the future selection of Centres of Excellence and call for proposals that will be subjected to competitive bidding and selection process.
TETFund should organize regular annual Project review meetings of the centres and there should be training and retraining programmes for centre directors and the head of the unit domiciled at the centres as well as organising annual monitoring and evaluation of the centres.
Also presenting the Report of the Advisory Committee on Operationalisation of TETFund Skills Development Special Intervention, the Chairman of the Committee, Dr. Nuru Yakubu, said the committee recommended polytechnics for TETFund Special Intervention according to zones.
He said in the “South-West, the five schools visited have shown preparedness except for the Polytechnic Ibadan because of the school leadership transition.
“It is therefore recommended that in 2024 the following two polytechnics should benefit; Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State and Federal Polytechnic, Ede, Osun State. For 2025, the committee recommends Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Ogun State and The Polytechnic Ibadan, if they can sort out their preparations.”
For South-South, the committee recommended Port Harcourt Polytechnic, Rimuola, Rivers State, and Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic Ikot Osunaa for 2024 TETFund Special Intervention and Delta State Polytechnic and another polytechnic to be identified for the year 2025.
For South-East, the Institute of Management & Technology was recommended for 2024; while for 2025, Abia State Polytechnic, Aba and Federal Polytechnic, Oko.
For the North-East, Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi and Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri were recommended for the 2024 intervention; and Adamawa State Polytechnic and Tatari Ali Polytechnic for 2025.
The North-West has Birnin Kebbi and Daura for 2024 while Kano State Poly and Sokoto State Poly are recommended for 2025. For the North-Central, Nasarawa was recommended for 2024 and Lokoja and Ilorin for 2025.
The committee also noted that there is a need to train a few more Quality Assurance Agents (QAA), especially from the informal sector.
There is a need to institutionalise the Recognition of Prior Learning; two options are sending at least 12 QAAs to Kenya, six from each geo-political zone, two from awarding bodies, three from TETFund, and one from NBTE.
Nura said: “The Kenyan board has given a reasonable estimate for hosting the trainees for a period of one week, which would be the duration of the training and the second option is to facilitate the trainees to come to Abuja for the training, and get beneficiary institutions to send reps.
“The disadvantage is that there is no current Recognition of Prior Learning administration in the country while in Kenya, it is fully entrenched and can be fully demonstrated.”
Minister, Executive Secretary state stand
After receiving the report, Prof. Mamman said it will make a major policy shift in education as it involves thorough investigations, and vowed that TETFund will stop funding any non-performing Centre of Excellence it established eight years ago.
He said government will not continue to reward indolence by giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do, stressing that each centre must earn its existence and meet the mileage set for them.
“We set out the team to go and inspect what they have done to justify if they are eligible for further funding. Only centres that justify the name will continue to receive funding. If you are receiving funds in the last four years and not performing, we will take the grains out of the chaff.
“The government is encouraging our scholars to simply rise to the occasion and deliver on their scholarship, what world-class scholars do; and we are not going to reward indolence. We can’t be giving free money to institutions that are not doing what they are supposed to do,” he said.
In terms of the skills, the minister said they are shifting the focus to skills.
“We want to raise the equipment level of those institutions, polytechnics and others so they can provide all the skill sets that we need in Nigeria in the highest quality that can service the country and internationally,” he said.
Speaking, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc Sonny Echono, maintained that the fund will not continue to throw money away to centres that are not living up to expectations.
While noting that some centres have funds with TETFund that they have not accessed since inception, he said, “The funds are with us because we have not released them until you reach a milestone. But that they have delayed in reaching those milestones, are causes of concern.”
Echono noted that the strategy for establishing centres of excellence was a very good one because TETFund realised that it didn’t have enough resources to improve all the facilities of all public institutions at the same time.
“The idea was to incubate; to have one centre, the right equipment, the right tools, the right faculty and experts that would lead our efforts in research, in promoting scholarship at the highest level so that they can also inspire other centres.
“We are going to be pooling from other institutions within the area that want to do further research or to carry out any other exploratory study in those particular fields in those areas,” he said.
He however noted that some of the centres have done very well since inception, stating that a lot of them are doing innovations.
“Sokoto just came up with one major solution for us. For example, they were the ones that discovered this vaccine for COVID, in partnership with other institutions. Now, we are also in the process of getting vaccines for Lassa fever and so many others.
“So, some are doing very well. And some have come up with prototypes that we are hoping to take to industries so that they begin to produce these goods and services,” he also said.