The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has said it would commence the construction of its North-Central zonal office in Nasarawa State in January 2023.
Executive secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, stated this during a courtesy visit by Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State on Thursday in Abuja.
Echono, who expressed delight over the tremendous impact of TETFund intervention projects in tertiary education institutions in Nasarawa State, said the zonal office would bring beneficiary institutions in the North-Central region closer to the fund.
He expressed appreciation to the governor for allocating land for the construction of the North Central zonal office.
While expressing the readiness of TETFund to reposition public tertiary education institutions for better performance, Echono lauded President Muhammadu Buhari for his massive support for the fund which he said had seen an upward review of education tax to two and half percent.
“With the effect from this year, TETFund is now getting two and half per cent, not two per cent as education tax, and Mr President has assured us that before the end of his administration, it would get to three per cent,” Echono said.
Earlier, the governor, who praised TETFund for the various intervention projects in Nasarawa State University and other public tertiary institutions in his state, commended Echono and his predecessor, Professor Suleiman Bogoro, for ensuring that the university benefited from high impact projects and other regular interventions.
“After I assumed office as governor, I visited here and I told him I needed your help. I want to introduce the faculty of engineering and faculty of medicine at the Nasarawa State University but we don’t have the money….
“We got the high impact and we were able to set up the faculties of Medicine and Engineering in Nasarawa State University. So, I thank the management of TETFund for the support we received.
“Secondly, when I came in, we looked at the courses we had in Nasarawa Polytechnic, now Mustapha Agwai Polytechnic, and we did not have a single accreditation on technical courses, I said we cannot be a polytechnic because polytechnic means many technical courses.
“We did not have accreditation, and we realised the reason for that was that we did not have some workshops, buildings, and others, and I came for assistance from TETFund and today we have four technical courses,” the governor said.
While stating that Nasarawa State still wants more from TETFund in order to meet the development needs of the state, Governor Sule expressed the wish that the education tax would be reviewed to four per cent to ensure more robust performance from the fund.
He expressed satisfaction with President Buhari’s move to ensure increment of the education tax to three per cent by next year.
