The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has stated that the latest monetary policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has caused challenges in paying tuition and stipends to students on foreign scholarships.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, made this known at a one-day stakeholders’ engagement on the new challenges with the TETFund intervention on Wednesday in Abuja.
According to Echono, TETFunds’s allocation is barely enough to service programs under its Tertiary Scholarship for Academic Staff (TSAS). He said, “We are considering suspending foreign scholarships while also considering an upward review of local scholarships.”
‘’The fund, at this material time, is also discouraging beneficiary institutions from initiating new benchwork programs.
‘’Additionally, there are issues related to scholars not returning to serve their bonds at their home institutions upon completion of their programs.”
‘’In fact, the challenge of scholars absconding has undermined and complicated the TSAS program and brought it under intense scrutiny.
‘’It is for these and other reasons that this engagement was organized. We need to address these challenges and find solutions to ensure the effective and smooth implementation of our scholarship programs,” he said.
Echono also revealed that TETFund recently signed several MoUs with some prestigious institutions overseas, that include some universities in Malaysia, India, Brazil, France, and the United States, to enhance the TSAS program in the future.
The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Chris Maiyaki, emphasized the importance of developing new funding strategies and advised TETFund to improve its monitoring process for a better return on investment.