Governor of Kano State, Abba Yusuf, has appealed to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to increase its intervention projects at Yusuf Maitama Sule University and Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil.
The Governor, who made the appeal during a courtesy visit to the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono noted that over the years, the Funds support has been instrumental to infrastructural, capacity development in Nigerian universities.
According to him, there was a need for a robust collaboration between the Kano government and the Fund to ensure improved education delivery.
He said: “The purpose of my coming (to TETFund) is to ensure continued collaboration between the Kano government and TETFund in terms of projects and other educational assistance to these two universities (Yusuf Maitama Sule University and Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil), of course, my predecessor established the third university in the state but as far we are concerned, these two universities are closed to our heart.”
Governor Yusuf specifically sought the Fund’s intervention in the areas of provision of more facilities, training and retraining of staff as well as flood control in Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil.
“We are here to thank the management for those intervention programmes and projects being executed in the two universities.
“Specifically I am more interested in infrastructure development, why because if you do not have classrooms, you don’t have hostels, you don’t have libraries or facilities then the entire system will collapse, so the most important thing as far as university or any other tertiary education institution is concerned is to ensure the provision of infrastructures.
“If you look at most universities in the country, Without the support of TETFund they won’t be where they are today in terms of educational facilities.
“I am more concerned about the training and retraining of the staff of the universities. TETFund has been assisting in areas of training and retraining.”
TETFund’s Executive Secretary who described Kano as a centre of commerce as well as learning with over a dozen universities in the state, said the Fund was ready to partner with the Kano government to improve the fortunes of tertiary education institutions in the state.
Clarifying the governor’s request for the two universities instead of the whole three owned by the state government, Echono said TETFund’s Board of Trustees, has put a limit on the number of institutions the Fund can intervene in a state.
He said: “TETFund intervenes in three institutions within a state; that is the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. The Board of Trustees, in order to ensure we concentrate resources and achieve meaningful impact, placed limitations on a number of institutions.
“So, we do not encourage states to just establish multiple institutions with only the intention of targeting TETFund intervention. It actually enlists two similar types of institutions at a time, and even when we enlist two institutions at a time, what I mean is either two universities or two polytechnics or two colleges of education.
“In order, to meet the provision of our law that talks about equality of states, to ensure we do not favour one particular state over the order. States that have more than one institution – that have two, actually, alternate them, meaning if this school get this year, the following year, the other one gets.
“Even the state that has one institution still gets the same amount because the institution will be getting it every year while the others will be alternating it.
“A three-way alternation is not acceptable to the Board of Trustees and that is why we have made that clear to the state governments he is collaborating on it because if you want to pick the third one, you need to drop one of the firsts to be able to admit it.”
