2017 education budget: Matters arising

In 2017 budget, while 92 billion is allocated as capital expenditure to UBEC which takes care of financial needs of primary and junior, officially, there is no allocation for TETFund, established as an intervention agency under the TETFund ACT – Tertiary Education Trust Fund (Establishment, etc) Act, 2011 and charged with the responsibility of managing, disbursing and monitoring the education tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The agency is to administer and disburse the amount in the Fund to Federal and State tertiary educational institutions, specifically for the provision and maintenance of the following: essential physical infrastructure for teaching and learning; instructional material and equipment; research and publication; academic staff training and development; any other need which, in the opinion of the Board of Trustees, is critical and essential for the improvement of quality and maintenance of standards in the higher educational institutions. It ensures that funds generated from education tax are utilized to improve the quality of education in Nigeria.

Records show that whereas the agency spent N2065.14m between 2009 and 2013, as intervention allocations on physical projects, research library development, staff training and development, publication of journals, conference attendance and setting up of entrepreneurship centres for universities, it spent N1101.83m on colleges of education and N1303.90m on polytechnics within the period under review. In all, it spent a total of N4470.87m as intervention funds within the period.

Education experts say that it is either the N50 billion earmarked for capital projects in education will be given to the agency or shared between it and the Federal Ministry of Education. Or, in the alternative, a part of the money, N150 billion, meant for special intervention programmes will be given to it.