Private Nigerian universities will not be getting a bite of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) largesse says the Executive Secretary of the agency, Professor Sulaiman Bogoro.
Private universities 'charge excessively', won't get FG help — TETFund
The Federal Government will not extend the TETFund to private universities according to the agency's Secretary who says these privately owned institutions charge excessive fees that poor Nigerian's can't afford.
Speaking in an interview with , Bogoro said the private universities "charge excessively" and are therefore not attended by children of poor Nigerians who earn too little to afford it.
"In this country, the privately owned tertiary institutions charge excessively and children of those people that earn N10,000 per month are not in these institutions," Bogoro said.
"...the children of the less privileged are almost exclusively in the public tertiary institutions and this is a statement of fact. Nobody can contradict it."
He said it would therefore be 'wrong' for the government to fund operations of institutions in the private sector or extend TETFUND resources to them.
"I have never believed that’s the right way to go. Very clearly, it would be the wrong way to proceed.
"Government should not be subscribing their operations. It’s a wrong way to think and do things."
Bogoro added the "government creates the enabling environment for the private institutions" and nothing more.
He explained that the Fund is government's attempt at doing "doing the best for the largest segment of the population" which in this case is the public tertiary institutions which he says "constitute more than three quarters of the [student] population."
In 2014 Federal Universities were allocated N912 million from the TETFund according to data released by Nigeria's Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, at the public presentation of a document, 'Consolidating the Transformation in the Education Sector: A Strategy- July 2014-May 2015,' on Monday, 15th of December.
In recent times there have been calls from stakeholders that the government should extend education interventions to the private sector.
TETFund is an intervention agency, established in 2011 to manage disburse and monitor the education tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
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