The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) said it had expended N185 billion in training 35,000 scholars in public tertiary institutions through its Scholarship for Academic Staff programme which began in 2008.
The Fund’s acting director of Academic Staff Training and Development, Abdullahi Imam disclosed this on Friday in Abuja when representatives of the TETFund Scholars Alumni Steering Committee visited the executive secretary, Sonny Echono.
One of the scholars, Prof. Kinsley Nwozor, said the purpose of the visit was to appreciate TETFund for standing by them throughout the period of their studies.
“There is no national agency that has done what TETfund is doing in Nigeria. An investment of N185 billion is not a chicken change. It is time for us to look at innovative ways of making TETFund stand out. You have done so much with gigantic infrastructures in universities.”
In his remarks, Arc Echono promised to support the scholars wherever they needed help, adding the first point would be to develop a database that will have all the names of the beneficiaries and their areas of specialisation.
“We want to count our blessings even beyond the scholars. You are only a vessel. You are a vehicle through which we achieve our primary aim of improving the quality of teaching and learning in the higher institutions and also promoting research and making the findings of those researches touch the lives of our people,. Echono said.