THE Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has approved the sum of N1 billion each for the parameter fencing of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ife, and the Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo.
The TETFund’s Executive Secretary Suleiman Booro, who stated this during a stakeholder meeting with heads of institutions on Tuesday, also said that some selected public institutions, including universities, polytechnics and colleges of education across the country, would get about N292.66 billion as research grants.
According to him, selected universities from all the geo-political zones in the country would get N906m each, while selected polytechnics and colleges of education would get N628m each.
“I have signed the letters of allocation for the research grants that we are issuing out; 217. This is the highest research grant ever. It has never gone beyond 200. We have 217 research grants that have recently been approved,” Bogoro said.
He revealed that TETfund’s Board of Trustees had recently approved N5 billion each for the University of Lagos and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, to embark on massive infrastructural projects’ development.
He also explained that the responsibility of completing the National Library Project in Abuja had been bestowed on TETFund.
He said the library represented an important national asset and should not be abandoned because of funding.
While stressing the importance of research to national development, Bogoro stated that funds allocated to the National Research Foundation had increased from N3bn to N8.5bn in recent times.
He called on the nation’s academics to live up to expectations by churning out good proposals, saying that the fund was always ready to finance such academic exercise.
He expressed delight that Nigeria was moving closer to an emergence of a National Research and Development Foundation and challenged academics to turn around the country’s fortunes through cutting-edge research.
Bogoro commended President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration’s consistency in the approval of grants to academics in the country.
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