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Presidency probes disbursement of N200b under TETFund

By Kanayo Umeh, Abuja
22 February 2017   |   3:24 am
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered investigation to unravel how N200 billion was “recklessly disbursed” to some few institutions by the past administration...

TETfund

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered investigation to unravel how N200 billion was “recklessly disbursed” to some few institutions by the past administration under the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) special intervention projects.

Executive Secretary of TETFund, Dr. Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, who disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Abuja on Monday after a one-day stakeholders’ meeting with heads of tertiary institutions, said the fund has recovered N74 billion out of over N200 billion.

According to him: “The (special intervention) fund was thoroughly abused and was crying, begging to be saved, because the priorities were inverted. Instead of spending majority of the fund on normal intervention it was turned upside down.

“In 2015 for example, over N200 billion was recklessly allocated as special intervention to very few tertiary institutions. N200 billion was allocated based on discretion, and under the law all polytechnics are to be treated equally, all colleges of education are to be treated equally and all universities are to be treated equally.

“We are very happy that the president has cancelled special intervention for 2015 and 2016 of which money has not been drawn, and we were able to save almost N74 billion out of more than N200 billion, and that investigation is going to commence soon.”

While saying that TETFund has approved the disbursement of annual direct disbursements of N149.392 billion to all public tertiary institutions in the country under the 2016 intervention, he said the allocation was the highest since the establishment of the agency.

“With this budget of change, each of the 40 federal universities and 34 state universities will receive N1.009 billion, each of the 54 public polytechnics will get N691.632 million while each of the 55 public colleges of education will get N679.057 million. This is the biggest annual direct disbursement (normal intervention) given to any beneficiary institution since the establishment of the Fund,” Baffa said.

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