On Wednesday April 5th, during the annual strategic planning workshop with all heads of beneficiary institutions in Abuja, the Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Sonny Echono, announced that President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the disbursement of N320.3 billion as intervention funds for public tertiary institutions in the country. For the Year 2023 intervention cycle, each university will receive a total sum of N1,154,732,133.00, while each polytechnic and college of education will get N699,344,867.00 and N800,862,602 respectively. This disbursement represents the highest disbursement to each beneficiary institution since the inception of the Fund. Under Buhari’s administration, the fortunes of the Nigerian tertiary education sector have improved significantly, with the total sum of N1.702 trillion disbursed as education tax collection to public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education between 2015 and now, compared to N1.249 trillion disbursed from the inception of the Fund in 1993 up to 2014 (21 years). The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, David Adejo, urged the beneficiary institutions to use the intervention judiciously, stating that the country is no longer looking for paper presentations but what one can do with their brain and hands.
