The Vice Chancellor of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago iwoye , Ogun State, Professor Ayodele Agboola, has appealed to the Federal Government not to abolish the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund).
Speaking to some newsmen in Ago Iwoye, Ogun State on the sidelines of the 34th Convocation of OOU, the argued that “instead of scrapping TETFUND for Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), both can be operating pari-passu because they perform different functions.”
He explained that TETFUND’s role is to assist the government-owned higher institutions at the federal and state levels in the area of infrastructure and capacity building of the staff, while NELFUND was established primarily to assist students to secure loans without interest.
The VC noted that the agencies of the FG have different functions and merging or scraping one for the other may create confusion.
Agboola pointed out that most of the modern buildings on Nigerian university campuses today were built through the assistance of TETFUND, adding “even most of the buildings in OOU were built through the assistance of TETFUND except for one or two donated by some individuals”.
On whether TETFund funding should be extended to private universities, the OOU Vice Chancellor said: “TETFUND is for government-owned universities. Since private universities are profit making institutions, there is no way you will use the tax payers’ money for a profit making venture such as a private university.”
