FG okays N161bn for 2019 TETFund Intervention Guidelines

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the sum of N161 billion for 2018 Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Intervention Guidelines to be utilised in 2019. Addressing newsmen in Abuja on Friday, Executive Secretary of the Fund, Dr. Abdullahi Baffa, said that the approved sum of N161B has been allocated to the eligible institutions for the 2019 activities in accordance with the provisions of the TETFund Act 2011. Giving a breakdown of how the funds will be appropriately disbursed to all the institutions, Dr. Baffa said that each public university will get an allocation of N785, 832,700.00. “Each public polytechnic will get the sum of N536, 703,502.00 and each College of Education will get an allocation of N510, 084,900.00 respectively. “The detailed breakdown of the allocations will be released after the fund communicates the allocation letters to the instructions”, Dr. Buffa said. On the review of activities for 2017 and 2018 activities, he disclosed that whereas the total sum of N69.18 billion was reaped for 2017 projects, a total of N133.84 billion was reaped for 2018 projects respectively. “Universities got N66.93 billion, polytechnics N32.37 billion, Colleges of Education N32.65 billion while others were N1.89 billion”. He said that Tetfund had in 2018 fully implemented the 2017 Revised Guidelines for accessing interventions funds by beneficiaries and institutions to ease the processes of submission and approval. This, according to Dr. Baffa, contributed significantly to beneficiary institutions delivering their 2017 intervention projects within the specified project cycles. He said: “As at November 2018, the total education tax collection stood at N200, 700,193,208.54. This shows an increase of about 25.47% over the previous year’s collection of N154.9Billion. “The growth in the education Tax Collection is a clear confirmation that Nigeria’s economy has recovered from the avoidable recession it was plunged into by the previous administration. “The increased collection will obviously translate to a bigger allocation for public Tertiary Education Institutions and therefore more projects, more scholarships, more research funds in the institutions”. He urged entitled institutions to come to the Fund’s head office and collect their allocation letters beginning from Monday, 7th January, 2019, adding that the detailed breakdown of the allocations will be released after the Fund communicates letters to the institutions. Doosuur Iwambe, Abuja