President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the guidelines for the implementation of year 2022 intervention budget to all compliant Tertiary Institutions across the country.

The Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Architect Sonny Echono said this in Abuja during a Strategic interactive session for heads of TETFund Beneficiary institutions with the theme: “Ensuring synergy for Effective Implementation of TETFund Interventions.”

Echono also said the both the letters of allocation for the Annual Direct intervention and Special Intervention shall be released to he institutions for onward implementation of the approved projects.

“It is my pleasure to inform you, that in line with the provisions of the Act, we have received the approval of Mr. President, for the guidelines of the Year 2022 intervention budget for implementation. It is for this reason amongst others, that I have invited you, to this strategic engagement.

“The disbursement for the annual direct intervention in the Year 2022 approved guidelines are summarized as follows, N642,848,138.00 to each University, N396,780,086.00 to each Polytechnic and N447,758,804.00 to each College of Education: The letters of allocation for the Annual Direct intervention shall be released to you at this meeting, while the allocations for special interventions will be released appropriately in due course”, Echono said.

The TETFund boss who called for synergy in a bid to achieving the national objective also said this can be achieved through purposeful development of human capital needs through the quality of the education sector.

Echono said, “the enormous task of repositioning the tertiary education sector for sustained relevance is a collective one and it requires that we work in harmony and synergy to achieve the desired national objective of meeting our human capital needs through a robust and high quality higher Education sector.

“This synergy, which is the aggregation of multiple resources that provide greater value, cooperation and teamwork will require that we bring on board our collective experiences and expertise towards finding solutions to specific national problems and goals”, he said.

Furthermore, while decrying the alarming rate of uncompleted projects in some universities where full Disbursement has been made, he said to the management of the Fund has been working to remove all bottlenecks serving as encumbrances to full implementation of projects.

“Henceforth internal audit clearance will only be required before payment of final tranche. The decision is to eliminate bottlenecks and delays in the execution of the intervention projects.

“Another area of serious concern to the Fund, is the incidence of distressed or non-performing projects which is becoming rampart and disturbing. The Fund for example has about 7 nonperforming/distressed projects in University of Port Harcourt. 6 in Enugu State University, a total of 5 in University of Nigeria Nsukka, 4 in Taraba State University and in University of Calabar, 4 in Kaduna State University and 1 at Alvan koku College of Education”.

Architect Sonny Echono said the Fund is. Proposing to refocus the entrepreneurship intervention line for universities to meet best global practice of entrepreneurship development and training.

He said the he present focus on provision of entrepreneurship centers and procurement of facilities and equipment, will be refocused to incorporate soft skills and initiatives in producing entrepreneurs and innovators.