The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) says it has released the sum of N75,206,387.13 as research grant to 15 public tertiary institutions across the country to support 135 research proposals.

According to Abdullahi Baffa, Executive Secretary of TETFund, the disbursement, made in July, was under the Institution Based Research (IBR) – an aspect of mandate of the agency supporting academic staff with quality research proposal.

They are also expected to publish outcomes of the research activity

But out of 152 universities in the country, comprising of 40 federal universities, 44 state universities and 68 private universities, only four universities were among the beneficiaries of the research grant, which awards a maximum of N2million to academic staff with research proposal.

Private universities are not entitled to interventions from the agency.

According to a monthly digest of TETFund unveiled in Abuja on Thursday by Baffa, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Ladoke Akintola University, Oyo State, Abubakar Tafawa University, Bauchi and Federal University, Oye-Ekiti were the universities with 31 research proposals that got N25,004,523.88 of the N75million.

Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Adamawa State and Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu were also the only polytechnics on the list of beneficiaries with 22 research proposals, taking N10,429,824.00 of the total grant, while 9 colleges of education with 82 research proposals took N39,732,039.00.

Among the Colleges of Education were; Kaduna State College of Education, Gidan Waya, Federal College of Education, Osiele, Ogun State, Federal College (Technical) Potiskum, Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo State and Federal College of Education, Katsina. Others were FCT College of Education, Zuba, College of Education, Gindiri I Plateau State, College of Education, Ikwo, Ebonyi State and Federal College of Education, Okene, Kogi State.

In August, the ICIR had reported how TETFund complained that 90 percent of lecturers’ research proposals were very poor and unfundable.

Femi Bamiro, former Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan and member of one of TETFund’s committees, had said: “The burden of research lies on the shoulder of tertiary institutions. Funding research started around 2009 but we must also not forget that prior to then research was probably nothing to think about in tertiary institutions.

“Only three institutions were lucky to attract foreign grants. I’m speaking for the University of Ibadan, you found out that most of the grants for meaningful research in the system were from WHO and so on. We used to have senate research grant in the university but when the Vice Chancellor cannot even pay salary, how can he get money for allocation of research until TETFund came with that N3billion.

“But when we started calling for proposals, initially we got less than 100 from out of the system; whether universities, polytechnics or colleges of education, and out of the 100 we found less than 10 fundable.”