Environment and atmosphere have been adjudged to be sacrosanct in cognitive development and educational output. To achieve that in Nigerian tertiary education, the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Dr. Abdullahi Baffa, after an inspection of all institutions, declared that the organisation will release funds for only beautiful and conducive buildings and surroundings which will compete globally. He spoke with Kuni Tyessi
Nigerians will want you to cite some of the rot you met and how you tackled them?
The Annual Direct Disbursement (ADD) for the 2015 allocation was only 20 per cent of the total allocation for that year, while special intervention which is discretionally was 80 per cent of the allocation for that year. That is a recipe for corruption. Against this background, what we first did was to suspend projects under special intervention. For all the special intervention allocation for 2014 and 2015 for which money had been disbursed already, we approved that they continued but ensured that they were done in accordance with the approval given. However, all other allocations and discretionary allocations for which TETFund has paid no money were cancelled.
How did the change come swiftly as any dubious contractor will prove difficult to be dealt with?
In one of our meetings with heads of institutions, we got them to involve law enforcement agencies because there were cases where contractors collected first tranche payment and disappeared. There were cases where contractors deployed to the site, started working and also disappeared. There were cases where contractors did not do up to half of the project, and they claimed they have worked and want to be paid the close-out amount. There were also cases where the things that were in the Bill of Quantities were not what were supplied to the institutions. We identified all these cases and we were able to resolve all of them. Many of them realised that we have eyes and ears beyond the formal process. So they return to the site. If they manage to complete the work, we pay them and we have been doing that. In some institutions, the heads had to involve the law enforcement agencies before they eventually got some contractors to go back to the site and complete the projects
What about the other areas of intervention, are they free from rot?
Another was in the implementation of the TETFund scholarships, what you call the Academic Staff Training and Development (AST&D). The scholarships are part of the capacity building intervention aimed to build the capacity of scholars working in our tertiary institutions and to create opportunities for them to pursue higher degrees for masters and PhD both at home and abroad.
But we realised that in quite some beneficiary institutions, the guidelines for the scholarships were being implemented in the breach. Beyond violating the guidelines, many of the beneficiary scholars who were given money to pursue their studies abroad refused to go and have spent the money on something else. We further realised that in a few institutions they were not giving the scholars the total money that was approved for them. They deduct certain percentage using different names like administrative charges and all sorts of illegal deductions.
There are also scholars that were given the approval to go to Europe or US for example, but they end up going to some African countries. Some scholars were given the authorisation to do PhD, but they go and register for a master’s degree. But the worst of them were scholars who will collect the money and refuse to go. The guidelines require all beneficiary institutions to pay the scholars their living costs on an annual basis and to pay their tuition to the training institutions also on annual basis. However, institutions will take the entire money and pay to the scholar 100 per cent.
What is your administration doing about the category of scholars or beneficiary institutions involved in such violation?
What we did was to conduct what we call scholarship audit. We realised that in some beneficiary institutions, scholars that were given the opportunity have travelled, they have registered, they were studying. However, there were a few of them, in the sense that even one non-compliance is enough problem in itself. These significant few have one sort of breach, or some kind of infringement or the other. Once we identify a violation or a breach of the terms of the guidelines by the beneficiary institution, we will not give you any money again for subsequent years until we have seen sufficient evidence that you are recovering the funds that you have paid to the defaulting staff or scholars.
What has your organisation put in place to forestall such breaches and prevent outcries over alleged stranded scholars?
We have systematised the process in such a way that it is going to be almost impossible for anyone to commit any fraud. For example, we insist that as one of the necessary conditions for disbursement of scholarship fund, we must see evidence that the beneficiary institution has opened a domiciliary account, since the scholarship money is supposed to be kept in a domiciliary account to protect the value. Also, we are now paying tuition fees directly to the training institutions on an annual basis. So the beneficiary institutions will only be receiving the living cost which they will remit to the scholars on a yearly basis. We have also taken the firm view that not all countries have the quality university system to train our scholars. Consequently, we have determined which countries our scholars should be sent to pursue higher degrees. We have also determined the universities where our scholars should and would be trained in those countries.
What have you done to prevent conferences from being a mere jamboree with public funds?
We spent billions of naira supporting and promoting scholars to attend international and local conferences. We however realised that a number of the conferences were just talk-shows. We were giving money to scholars to go just on a picnic for the simple reason that many third party conferences, predatory conferences, scam conferences sprang up all because of abuse of TETFund guidelines on conference attendance in the past. When we started conducting the audit of the previous conferences that were approved, we realised that some people had collected the money to go to foreign conferences, and they didn’t go. We have already started asking scholars to refund money. ‎This is an opportunity created by TETFund to support scholars who otherwise would not have been able to go and interact with their colleagues across the world. Unfortunately, people were abusing the opportunity, but we have put a stop to all that.
Can you shed light on some of the policies you introduced and how they are helping to reshape the system?
When we studied the operational guidelines and we understood that there were quite a lot of loopholes that the beneficiary institutions, beneficiary scholars and our staff were taking advantage of, we felt that there was need to do a review and revise the guidelines in line with sound practices. In the area of physical infrastructure for example, we realised that we will allocate hundreds of millions of naira, sometimes billions of naira to beneficiary institutions and they go and do whatever they like. We have introduced what we call project proposal defence. When we issue allocation to a beneficiary institution, the first thing that they would have to do is to come and defend their proposal, what they intend to use the allocation for before a panel of TETFund managers, and explain to us what they plan to do. We do this to ensure that the allocation that we are giving to the beneficiary institutions complies with the enabling legislation that defines the mandate of TETFund.
We have four clear mandate areas, and they are: supporting the provision of essential infrastructure for teaching and learning; supporting the provision of instructional materials and equipment; supporting research and publications; and academic staff training and development.‎ The project proposal defence has solved a lot of problems. ‎Another thing that this has helped us to address is the quality, size and aesthetic beauty of the projects we are supporting. We have insisted that we would not accept any matchbox structure, any mediocre, ugly building in our tertiary institutions. We hold the view that the environment where learning and teaching takes place in our tertiary institutions should be really inspiring and pleasing. The environment should be able to inspire both the teachers and learners and the quality of that environment means we have to put in place beautiful, qualitative and durable structures and thankfully we were able to achieve that.
Aside the scholarship scheme and conference attendance, what other non-physical intervention did you focus on?
We did the same thing with the Library Development Fund. It is established to support the stocking of our libraries with books, journals and other periodicals both hard and electronic copies. But we realised the expenditure on library development is supplier-driven instead of demand-driven. We therefore insist that all beneficiary institutions must develop Collection Development Policy, which is a document that guides the entire library operations. It includes procurements of library holdings and maintenance of the library holdings. Many beneficiary institutions didn’t have such document, and we insist that as a condition of drawing down from the fund, there must be a Collection Development Policy document for all the libraries in our beneficiary institutions. That policy will ensure that holdings that are procured by our institutions are demand-driven rather than supplier-driven, with all the attendant abuse and distortions. We have also conducted what we call the access clinic. It is meant to help our beneficiary institutions to be able to know the outstanding amount of money allocated to them; what they are yet to access from TETFund and for us at the TETFund to find out from them what the impediments and challenges are.
We are yet to hear much about the allocation which allows selected beneficiary institutions to carry out Special High Impact Projects (SHIP) was that suspended also?
No, it was never suspended. In fact, it is noteworthy that for the Special High Impact Allocation, we have given six polytechnics, six colleges of education and 12 universities the Special High Impact Allocation. We are spending about N36 billion on that recently, aside the over N132 billion already spent on the project before now, making it over N168 billion. And these projects have all sprung up across the beneficiary institutions landscape.
There was a recent media outcry that about N500 billion was yet to be accessed and universities were being charged to come forward and access it. Do you have such money that has not been accessed?
There is never such an amount at TETFund. How he arrived at the figure we just don’t know. But you see on our website, the education tax collection for each year is there, what was allocated to beneficiary institutions is there and what was disbursed. We have even gone further than that. What we did was even to introduce a significant document that we call the TETFund Monthly Digest. It is providing our stakeholder community with monthly information about our intervention operations.
But are there allocated funds yet to be accessed by beneficiary institutions which are with your organisation?
Yes, there are issues of accessing TETFund money because of the model we are operating. We are operating the Performance Index Disbursement (PID) model of operation. You have to perform before we give you subsequent money. So if you didn’t retire the money, you cannot come for another one and that is why we did what we called the access clinic.
