The executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono, an architect, said a total of N3.8 billion had been expended on 1,500 Nigerian scholars abroad under its academic training programme as a bailout fund to cushion the effect of the current exchange rate of the naira.
Echono, who disclosed this during an oversight visit to the Fund by the House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education Trust Fund led by the chairman, Princess Miriam Onuoha on Thursday in Abuja, said various amounts of bailout were given based on the circumstance of the scholars.
“We have taken care of 1,500 scholars with a total of N3.8 billion expended. We identify a cut-off point for those who will be eligible for the scholarship,” Echono said.
He said the high exchange rate caused some challenges for TETFund-sponsored scholars as many of them requested extra funding, adding that the issue has also resulted in a drop in the number of beneficiaries of the Fund’s academic training programme in foreign institutions.
While saying that the remittances process for scholars in the past was not that good, Echono said many of the institutions came back to TETFund expressing concerns over the payment system.
He said the collection from education tax in 2020 was N257 billion, and by 2021, the Fund received a sharp decline in the tax collection of N185.5 billion and rose to N328.8 billion in 2022 and N725 billion in 2023 respectively.
On the issue of attracting foreign grants for cutting-edge research, Echono said that before now, Nigeria was not doing well, adding that through the efforts of TETFund the story has now changed as it moved from the 9th position to the 7th in Africa in terms of countries that attract the highest research grants on the continent.
In her remarks, the chairman of the committee, Rep Miriam Onuoha, said the visit was meant to see how the agency had performed in the 2021-2023 budgets, in line with the budgetary provision and to ensure that allocations are used judiciously.
She lauded Echono for how he meticulously executed projects and other interventions in line with the mandate of the TETFund.