FG approves 2022 intervention funds for public universities, others

THE federal government has approved the 2022 intervention funds for public higher institutions across the country.

The executive secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, Arch. Sunday Echono made this known while receiving the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, CVCNU, in his office.

Echono said the meeting of all beneficiary institutions will be held by next week Monday to interact further and brief including some of the proposed reforms that have been approved for implementation. 

He assured the vice-chancellors of the Fund’s commitment to sustain the ongoing reforms in the sector, with increased emphasis on the content of its interventions, particularly in the areas of research, ICT, and in the areas of encouraging a reading culture in our society through the publication of books.

“We have existing partnerships, particularly the deputization of Thesis. We are confident that once this is accomplished it will not only provide open learning resources for researchers and students who want to access previous works done in their respective areas of research but also promote a culture of academic excellence.

“One of the problems of our education today is the quality of our graduates, particularly the quality of the thesis. “Many students plagiarize people’s work”

“We believe in the anti-plagiarism device you have developed will go a long way in dictating this and ensuring compliance. Indeed, we have adopted a policy in TETFund that going forward, all proposals coming to us must go through your system and receive certification that it has passed a minimum standard that is required for all publishers and authors before they can benefit from our support.

“On the issue of support, I’m pleased to inform you that His Excellency Mr. President has just approved the 2022 disbursement proposals and guidelines and the meeting of all beneficiary institutions will be held by next week Monday to interact further and brief including some of the proposed reforms that have been approved for implementation. 

“At the heart of this is the issue of journals. We are keen and determined to ensure that publications are useful, relevant, and are also current that can be sited anywhere in the world,” he added.

He also lamented the number of resources being spent on sending children abroad for studies, urging universities, especially private ones to create a niche and compete with foreign universities that are attracting students in order to save cost.

Earlier, the chairman of the CVC, Prof Samuel Gowon Edoumiekumo expressed confidence that Echono will continue with the trajectories of the past leadership and introduce new vistas that will add value to higher education provisioning in the country.

“As you may be aware, the CVCNU is working closely with the Fund to deploy the thesis digitization for Nigerian tertiary institutions. This is in addition to deploying our homegrown Plagiarism Detection Software called EagleScan.

“The application is a best-in-class solution that will enable all final year and postgraduate students to undertake a plagiarism check before they submit their long essays/thesis, Developed by a team of software engineers from six public and private universities in Nigeria, EagleScan plugs into several local research repositories and offers 14 features, including local language support, that make it stands out against local and international competitors. 

“The Funds support for both projects is a significant turning point in the efforts to develop a National Academic Research Repository.”

The CVCNU further called for a review of the funding support to beneficiary institutions to access tier-one journals and repositories to improve the research capabilities of our staff and students and to also help build the capacity of academic staff for generating the content, especially video and 3-Dimensional images, to support teaching.

Edoumiekumo however, sought support from TETFund for its forthcoming event to celebrate sixty years of providing leadership to the Nigerian university system.