The Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, says it has secured the approval of the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to allocate special funds in its 2023 budget for the completion of all ongoing projects.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday, while receiving a delegation from the Benue State University, Makurdi, led by its Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, Sebastine Hon, SAN.
According to Echono, the move follows complaints from several institutions about uncompleted projects due to high cost of construction materials, adding that the special provision will address the issue of delay in projects’ completion.
“I have earlier given the directive that as a matter of policy, we have undertaken a comprehensive review of all of our outstanding projects with a view to bringing those that are close to completion, speedy completion through the various strategies we have identified.
“I am also pleased to inform you that we have secured the concurrence of the Honourable Minister of Education that from next year, we will have a special provision in our allocations for the completion of all ongoing projects.
“We have projects that commenced but because of fluctuations in prices of important building materials, because of the delay associated with the Covid lockdown and other disruption to other economic activities we now have both time and cost overhead and the earlier we address this the better for our country as we will not have abandoned projects littering round our campuses,” he said.
He noted that TETFund has a very high rate of completion of projects, promised that the Fund would also look into the request for special intervention on the BSU library that was affected by storm through its Stability Fund.
Earlier, in his remarks, the Pro-Chancellor of Benue State University, Hon, put the cumulative sum of TETFund’s intervention in the university to about N7 billion from 1999 to date.
While congratulating Echono on his appointment as executive secretary of TETFund, he commended President Muhammadu Buhari over his choice, describing him as “one of our illustrious alumni, having graduated with a degree in MBA in Management from our University.”
Hon, who expressed gratitude for the various TETFund projects dotting the university’s campus, also appealed to the fund for the speedy completion of other ongoing projects.
“Our campus is dominated with TETFund-sponsored legacy
structures including the central library, laboratories, lecture theatres, faculty buildings, student social centre, and entrepreneurship development centre, not excluding research (IBR, NRF, ARJ, AMB), academic training and conferences (foreign and local), post-doctoral, Bench work and developments in ICT.
“In all, the University has received about seven billion
Naira (N7,000,000,000.00) in intervention from TETFund between 1999 and now.
” For want of time, we would have provided the statistics to enable the ES to understand our excitement and appreciation to TETFund in this regard.
” The Executive Secretary Sir, we have some TETFund-supported projects on-going now. Whereas some of the contractors have shown commitment, some have been poor.
” It is important to mention that the Covid-19 lockdown affected the speed and cost as it were. The projects include, Construction and furnishing of Faculty of Education building -85 percent; Construction and furnishing of Research Development and Innovation Centre – 90 percent; Construction and furnishing of Academic Office building-80 percent;
Construction and furnishing of block of offices for College of Health Sciences – 90 percent; Construction and furnishing of Faculty of Science building – 45 percent.”
Speaking further, the Pro-Chancellor called for a waiver to access the 2021/2022 TETFund’s allocations to enable the University’s address its challenges as well as special intervention on the institution’s library that was recently touched by heavy storm.
” We have a very small campus, and we desire to expand in terms of content-base and infrastructure. Our University has commenced appreciable steps with NUC to commence the following
programmes: Architecture, Pharmacy, Engineering, and Building Engineering.
“Therefore, and further to the level of completion of the above listed projects, we hereby appeal to you to grant us a waiver to allow the University to access the 2021 and 2022 annual allocations to
enable us to proceed with the projects tied to those allocations.
“We wish to also report that our central library suffered severe damage caused by a recent storm. This has left the building and property therein exposed to the elements. We desire to submit a request for disaster intervention,” he said.