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Foreign and local conferences attended by 15,263 lecturers in public universities, polytechnics and colleges of education between June 2023 and July 2024 cost the Federal Government over N9.5bn.
This was revealed in data obtained from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
TETFund, a government intervention agency popularly referred to as the “brainchild” of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, was formed as a product of the Education Tax Act of 1993.
This Act repeals the Education Tax Act Cap. E4, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004 and Education Tax Fund Act No. 17, 2003 and establishes the Tertiary Education Trust Fund charged with the responsibility for imposing, managing and disbursing the tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
The TETFund is to disburse funds to public tertiary institutions for physical infrastructure, instructional materials and equipment, research and publications and academic staff training and development.
Before the establishment of the scheme in 2011, government-owned tertiary institutions were poorly funded.
The scheme was designed to improve the management of funds disbursed to these institutions.
According to the data obtained by our correspondent on Thursday in Abuja, the sum of N2.4bn was disbursed to lecturers in colleges of education.
While 319 lecturers in the colleges participated in foreign conferences, 4,032 participated in local conferences.
For polytechnics, the report revealed that the sum of N3.7bn was disbursed with 550 participating in foreign conferences while 5,834 participated in local conferences.
The amount benefited by 559 university lecturers participating in foreign conferences and 3,969 academics participating in local conferences was put at N3.3bn.
Sponsoring the training of the teaching staff is part of the core purpose of research and publications and academic staff training and development by the Fund.
The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, speaking during the inauguration of the TETFund Board of Trustees in September 2024, called for judicious utilisation of funds accruing to TETFund to foster development.
He noted that the only thing sustaining public tertiary education in Nigeria remained TETFund.
The PUNCH reports that Osodeke asked that any vice-chancellor who misappropriated the grant given to their institution by the TETFund should be jailed.
