THE reckless disbursement of Tertiary Education Trust Fund’s N200 billion by past officials is making the present management to grow grey hairs, with President Muhammadu Buhari’s order that the agency’s activities be investigated. He has stopped further disbursement until sanity returns to the system. The raiding of public treasury, especially special accounts, is a notorious staple of governance here.
In tandem with the presidential directive, TETFUND has recovered N74 billion. The committee set up to investigate the abuse should invite the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission into the matter, where a clear case of criminality has been established.
The Executive Secretary of TETFUND, Abdullahi Baffa, who exposed the malfeasance at a meeting with vice-chancellors, provosts and rectors of public universities, colleges of education and polytechnics in Abuja recently, noted that only N50 billion was properly released “when special intervention fund was turned into something else.” An angry Buhari ensured the exclusion of its financial provision in the 2016 budget. It has been the same story in the 2017 budget currently under consideration in the National Assembly.
For decades, government has failed woefully in funding its institutions well, resulting in inadequate provision for classrooms and students hostels; obsolete libraries; and ill-equipped laboratories and technical workshops. TETFUND was created via Act 2011 to fill this void.
As an intervention agency, it manages, disburses and monitors the annual Education Tax, being two per cent on the assessable profit of all registered companies in Nigeria. With grants from it, institutions are expected to improve their physical infrastructure, instructional material and equipment; embark on research and publication; and academic staff training.
But the mandate is being undermined by compromises, either from warped government officials or the institutions. In Kano, Baffa lamented the non-judicious application of billions of naira meant for upgrading libraries and manpower training. According to him, grants so far released are enough for institutions to set up world-class libraries. His testimony: “I have seen a request that was sent to the fund where a book that I know cost only N1,500 was said to have been procured at N150,000. This is how the institutions are squandering public funds.”
The TETFUND boss was shy of calling those involved thieves. He decried universities’ sponsorship of their staff on postgraduate training in second-rate universities, adding that, henceforth, such sponsorship would only be approved after an assessment of the university and country for such programmes. Indeed, training our university scholars in world-class universities abroad will enhance the quality of teaching and research and by inference output.
Baffa’s chronicle of TETFUND abuses by university administrators should elicit the interest of the Academic Staff Union of Universities. It is not only the government that it should challenge for the prevailing hostile academic environment, but vice-chancellors that mismanage resources, undermine the quality and tradition of the ivory tower. A university is a global centre of excellence committed to knowledge production through teaching, learning and research. But many of those managing their affairs are misfits. It explains why quality assurance has been so eroded in these schools to the extent that the degrees/certificates they issue are no longer respected, both within and outside our shores.
Before now, the Presidency had been inundated with protests of abuses in the university system, for which it dispatched visitation panels to some institutions. These anomalies range from mismanagement of funds, admission of students beyond the institution’s carrying capacity; financial inducement to pass examination, sex-for-marks, plagiarism, and unearned professorial promotions. With the TETFUND racketeering, the government needs to go the whole hog and flush out the bad eggs from the system.
Clearly, the fate of TETFUND is not different from that of other special funds such as the Stabilisation Fund, Ecological Fund and Natural Resources Fund that have been serially abused without those culpable made to face the full weight of the law. For instance, a Senate Public Accounts Committee report in 2013 revealed that a total of N1.04 trillion out of N1.5 trillion that accrued to special accounts between 2002 and 2012 was grossly mismanaged.
A shocked David Mark, as the then Senate President, wearily observed, “If we had done well since 2002, this should not have happened. But we never bothered to look into this. Overall, we share in the blame…” Unfortunately, the situation – indolence in legislative oversight – continues. The lawmakers’ failure to protect public treasury as part of their remit should demand critical attention.
In the United States, for instance, the Congress keeps a monthly watch on special funds to ensure they are safe.A summary of financial report dated November 30, 2014, from the Department of Homeland Security, showed that its Federal Emergency Management Agency account had a balance of $6.97 billion. The balance sheet was a Disaster Relief Fund Congressional Monthly Report. This is meticulous legislative oversight at work.
But trillions of naira disappear in Nigeria, exposed only by investigation. Worse, no consequential action is taken for such heist. This perennial indifference to transparency and accountability in public finance management should end. The President was, therefore, right in stopping further TETFUND grants. The clean-up should be clinical and those found liable severely punished to serve as a deterrent to crooks still in the system.
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