Fatai Ibrahim
It is Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, who was quoted as saying that: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund), Professor Suleiman Elias Bogoro, since his reinstatement by President Muhammadu Buhari in January 2019 has not left anyone in doubt about the giant strides he has taken in the last 17 months. As rightly stated by Michael Jordan, Prof Bogoro believes that team work is paramount for any leader to succeed as he will not only build bridges but legacies and will leave his imprint on the sands of time.
Professor Bogoro revealed that the underline factor for his achievements is focus, coupled with team work as captured by Henry Ford’s quote who said, “Working Together is Success”. The TETfund boss confessed when he said, “Focus is secret of my numerous achievements recorded since assumption of office and I have justified the confidence reposed on me as the executive secretary TETfund by turning around the stories of Nigerians public tertiary institutions within the shortest time that I took over the mantle of leadership of TETfund.”
Today, in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s next level agenda, TETfund under Bogoro has approved the commencement of monitoring of TETfund sponsored participants to local and foreign conferences. This is to ensure that staff of beneficiary institutions attends the conference as approved for them by the Board of Trustees of TETfund.
With Bogoro and his team’s efforts, over 60% of lecturers in the Nigerian Universities system today are now Doctorate degree holders as against 40 percent that was obtainable four years ago. Bogoro’s reforms also include the maximum sponsorship of three years for Doctorate degree programmes to 4 years period. TETfund is now a global brand and has embraced renewable energy to light up the higher institutions as seen in Bayero University Kano (BUK). According to Bogoro, renewable energy is the major quest for sustainable development in western world and with this centre now in operation at Bayero University (BUK) Kano, it is expected that Nigeria would seek a goal in earnest.
In the area of impact assessment committee, Prof. Bogoro and his team has succeeded in putting up an independent committee. The leadership and composition are exclusively made up of independent persons. The document tells the story of TETfund from 1999 to 2019. Bogoro said the impact assessment is TETfund’s way of “opening up ourselves for public scrutiny, where we have weakness, we will be happy to be reflective, go back and be guided by their suggestions.”
On April 24, 2019, at Gombe State University, Bogoro commissioned the ICT centre funded with (2013 Special Intervention Fund) and also the commissioning of TETfund funded 2019 Special Intervention High Impact Projects at the University of Port-Harcourt on 30th March 2019. There was also the commissioning of University Of Lagos Academic Publishing Centre among others on 30 March 2019.
The commissioning of the Academic Publishing Centre (APC) and other completed projects at the University of Calabar on 27th and 28th February 2019 are noteworthy. Not left out is Federal University at Gusau Zamfara State where gigantic and legacy projects were commissioned between January 23 and 25, 2020. In the same vein, on 1st November 2019, commissioning of special intervention and 2013 ICT center projects were successfully carried out at the University of Jos. Bogoro and his team also commissioned the special annual intervention projects between 6th and 8th December, 2019.
There was also the iconic commissioning of TETfund projects on 12th December 2019 (TETfund 2014 normal intervention projects) at the Federal University Lokoja. Interestingly, landmark and legendary projects were also commissioned by Bogoro and his team from 26th to 30th November 2019 at the University of Benin, Ambrose Ali University Ekpoma, Edo State, Polytechnic Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State University Abraka, Imo State University, Owerri, Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwu and Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa.
At the polytechnic level, TETfund interventions include fabrication and technical interventions are the fulcrum of technological development of any country. Nigerian polytechnics get subvention annually for fabrication while Colleges of Education (COE) are also not left out. Bogoro’s initiatives at the COE also include the support of teaching practice as well as making available micro teaching laboratory equipment and at the universities.
Entrepreneurship Fund is provided by TETFund and Bogoro is deliberately encouraging it knowing well that knowledge is power and very relevant. “Let our graduates be job creators, not only employability which is a higher threshold than just being employable,” Prof. Bogoro said.
Manuscript development is also one of key interventions under the dynamic leadership of Prof. Suleiman Bogoro and it include; the support of textbook production by lecturers and supporting the transformation of PhD thesis to textbook and in line with this, the technical advisory committee inaugurated recently is doing well in this regard. There is mechanical pathology, anthropology, criminology of artificial intelligence, artificial dissemination, which applies to every discipline including ICT, Architects and Society of Engineers and others.
It will not be out of place to commend Professor Bogoro for breathing a new lease of life to our higher education system in Nigeria which can be felt all over. Team spirit has been the catalyst for the numerous successes achieved by Prof Bogoro and as captured by a motivational speaker, Byron Pulsifer, “The best teams in the world do not depend on players acting alone, they depend on every one acting as a unified whole.”
Therefore suffice to say that Bogoro is on the right path as he takes TETfund to the next and desired level in line with President Buhari’s vision of total transformation of our education system.
Ibrahim writes via [email protected]m
