TETFund inaugurates committee to assess its interventions in 20 years

The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Professor Elias Suleiman Bogoro, has inaugurated the Technical Advisory Committee on Impact Assessment (TACIA) of the Fund Wednesday in Fraser Suites Abuja. The committee which consists of renowned academics selected from various tertiary institutions technocrats in the country was charged with the mandate to assess the impact of the Fund based on its interventions and the progress made by the beneficiary institutions in 20 years (1999-2019).

To ensure the committee carries out its assignment without distraction, it was given a terms  of reference which include

carrying out impact assessment of TETFund interventions from 1999 to 2019; determination of the level of implementation, mandates and effectiveness of the fund; to determine challenges, achievements and weaknesses recorded and observed in the course of the implementation of the existing projects, programmes and intervention lines of the Fund; to improve future direction of the fund within the TETFund statutory mandate as encapsulated in its establishment Act.

Other terms include collating and analysing: selected speeches of the past and present Executive Secretaries of TETFund; annual/ periodic publications reports and communications arising from annual events such as TETFund/FIRS interactive forum; strategic plan documents; annual interventions and internal working budgets, and lastly to examine any other matter which in the opinion of the committee is relevant to the impact assessment of TETFund interventions and to submit the report on or before Friday November29,  2019.

In his speech, Professor Bogoro explained why it is important for the Fund to assess its activities within the last 20 years.

“Through the assessment the fund would be able to review the path of its journey so that it would be able to reveal strengths, weaknesses, progresses, challenges and windows of opportunities in order to improve.

“TETFund is ready to maintain its status as one of the most visible, impactful and relevant intervention agencies that has become a model in Africa.

“The TACIA team has been carefully picked to reflect some of the best experts in development work, research and scholarship,” he said.

The latest inauguration of the technical advisory committee on impact assessment was the third in 2019 when the Executive Secretary would be inaugurating committees that were mandated to take Nigerian tertiary institutions and invariably Nigeria from the woods.

The previous one was a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) inaugurated in August 8, 2019 on Book Development Fund.

The first was the ad-hoc committee on Research and Development (R&D) of TETFund in March.

During the adhoc committee  of R&D, Bogoro reassured that researchers in Nigerian tertiary institutions would have no cause to remain poor.

He said innovative research and its consequent commercialisation is the driver that moves and nurtures the engine of modern economic growth, thus it is an important driver of poverty alleviation.

“The key measurement parameters for Nigerian Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), the anchor for Nigeria’s economic transformation blueprint is dependent on Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) . The advancement in SET is dependent on R&D.

“Innovative research and its consequent commercialisation is the driver that moves and nurtures the engine of modern economic growth, thus it is an important driver of poverty alleviation.

“There is ample evidence to show that R&D propelled by higher education, more than anything else, has contributed to the rise and expansion of the world knowledge economy.” Bogoro said.

In his closing remarks, Bogoro said that any country that does not value its intellectuals will  value nothing.

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