By Favour Nnabugwu

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TetFund has said that it increased 2012 intervention fund for universities by 2,931 per cent and over 1,000 for Polytechnics and Colleges of Education across the country.

The executive secretary of TETFund, Prof. Mamood Yakubu at the just-concluded 2012 Strategic Planning Workshop for Benefiting Institutions, announced that universities would have a total sum of N598 million which included N350m for normal projects, N53m for library intervention as against subsequent years of N23m, N10m for the publication of journals, N40m for conference attendance, among others.

Tetfund boss further said that polytechnics would have N339.5m as against the N26m of past years. The fund to polytechnics, according to Yakubu, is expected to be used as follows: N210m for project intervention, N30m for library development and N9.5m for research.

Others are N64m for staff training, N5m for the publication of journals, N15m for conference attendance and N1m for the development of manuscripts.

Colleges of Education would have N321m as grand total while N210m out of it goes to projects, N20m for library development, N5m  for research, N55m for staff training, N5m  for publications, N10m for teaching practice, N15m will go for conference attendance and N1m will be used for the development of manuscripts.

The TETFund boss lamented the inadequate communication or lack of it among vice-chancellors, rectors and provosts whilst he warned that ‘on no account will any request be granted if it is not for the vice-chancellor, provost or rector.

”Communicating with us must be properly done as it is the cause of delay from us as different principal officers are known to have written memos to the commission without the knowledge of the heads of institutions.”

He advised heads of those institutions to ensure that judicious use of the fund especially for the training of teachers in colleges of education.

He regretted decline in the number of teachers that specialize in science and technology while he assured that ‘guidelines would be issued to institutions for guidance and possible solutions to lingering issues.