By Adedapo Adesanya
Some universities and other higher education institutions in the country will come under scrutiny following their inaction regarding contracts executions, the Tertiary Execution Trust Fund (TETFund) has said.
According to the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Bogoro, the fund will roll out punitive measures, including outright stoppage of intervention activities in affected institutions.
Speaking recently in Abuja, he said a financial and forensic audit on the intervention activities of the fund for the past 20 years have been carried out in order to pinpoint the anomaly.
Business Post had earlier reported that the fund had retrieved N10 billion from beneficiary institutions that received funds but did not execute the projects they were meant for and now, the next step in ensuring transparency would be to sanction non-performance regarding contracts.
Speaking on the fund’s overseas scholarship programme, the TETFund chief revealed that over N7.2 billion was recently spent to cover tuitions and other expenses of over 1,000 postgraduate students on its scholarship roll in foreign institutions.
He said that one of the challenges faced by TETFund scholars abroad was the policy of allowing only three years period for PhD programmes as contained in the scholarship agreements and this has found a solution.
Mr Bogoro said that since it was difficult to complete a PhD programme in three years in some countries, the Board of Trustees of TETFund had sat down and approved that the duration of PhD scholarships be increased to four years.
He also spoke on the level of malpractice in conferences attendance among lecturers, lamenting that it was sadly the practice of some to receive money and then send proxies to sign attendance at conferences for them abroad.
He said a very strong case of malpractice has been made in that regard and now that he is informed, action would be taken to ensure that is tackled henceforth.
Modupe Gbadeyanka