The Tertiary Education Trust Fund(TETFund), has explained that it was not disbursing funds to Colleges of Agriculture in the country because they were not part of its mandate.
Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, TETFund Executive Secretary said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday.
Bogoro said that colleges of agriculture and colleges of nursing only benefited from the fund through a special intervention, when it was known as Education Trust Fund(ETF).
He said that the funding was discontinued because the colleges were not in the education sector, which was the mandate of the fund.
“The original concept of the Education Trust Fund(ETF) was for tertiary institutions.
“Colleges of Agriculture are not in the education sector. They are in the agriculture sector.
“It was the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that innovatively thought of an out of the box funding window.
“So, stakeholders in the Ministry of Agriculture should also think, lock themselves up for some time and come up with alternatives but not to getting funds from the education sector,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the National Assembly is currently working on an amendment to the TETFund Act, to including colleges of agriculture in its intervention.
TETFund was established as an intervention fund under the TETFund Act 2011 and charged with managing, disbursing and monitoring education tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.(NAN)
