TETFund may suspend foreign scholarships over forex crisis

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund says the recent monetary policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria has created difficulties in the payment of tuitions and stipends to students it placed on foreign scholarships.

The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, disclosed this at a one-day Stakeholders Engagement on Emerging Issues with the TETFund Intervention in Abuja on Wednesday.

Echono said since TETFunds’s allocation was barely enough to service programmes under its Tertiary Scholarship for Academic Staff, the agency was considering suspending foreign scholarships and instead undertake an upward review of local scholarships.

‘’The fund, at this material time, is also discouraging beneficiary institutions from initiating new benchwork programmes.

‘’Additionally, there are issues related to scholars not returning to serve their bonds at their home institutions upon completion of their programmes.

‘’In fact, the challenge of scholars absconding has undermined and complicated the TSAS programme and brought it under intense scrutiny.

‘’It is for these and other reasons that this engagement was organised. We need to address these challenges and find solutions to ensure the effective and smooth implementation of our scholarship programmes,” he said.

Echono disclosed that TETFund recently signed several MoUs with some prestigious institutions overseas, including some universities in Malaysia, India, Brazil, France and the United States, with a view to enhancing the TSAS programme in the future.

The acting Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, Chris Maiyaki, said there was a need to develop new strategies for funding and advised TETFund to revamp its monitoring for quality assurance so as to have a better return on investment on its projects.

(Punch)