The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Rasheed, has commended the great impact projects carried out by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) in Nigerian universities, have had on the survival of Nigerian universities, during the pre-convocation lecture of the fourth combined convocation of Bingham University in Karu, Nasarawa State with the topic ‘Issues in the Nigerian Tertiary Education System.’
He stated that “without TETFUND, most universities would have gone into extinction.”
He made this statement following his lamentations onthe low funding of the educational sector in Nigeria.
According to him, in many universities, there are huge infrastructure deficits coupled with grossly inadequate lecture halls, laboratories, offices, hostels, internet and electrical facilities, among others which most of the approved budgets for the running of universities by the government are not enough to cover.
For example, Nigerian public universities budget N1 billion for energy every year but get far less in terms of releases to them and thus, there was a need to invest more in the education sector as the impact of low education budgets tends to heighten the illiteracy rate.
“We need to be more serious with our education sector in this country. Public universities have to budget close to N1 billion for energy every year to buy diesel, pay for electricity, service the generating sets, attend to some other things and what is the government giving them?
“We will be going for federal universities budget defence at the National Assemble and if we are lucky, the National Assembly may allocate between N11 million and N12 million per month as overheads to take care of energy every month.
“But in reality, what universities spend is between N60 million to N80 million monthly to pay for electricity and that is why there are inadequacies in the aspect of water supply, counselling, support for teachers, communication, internet and cleaning services,” he said.
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