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Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Executive Secretary, Dr. Abdullahi Baffa, has reiterated that the mandate of the Fund does not include intervention to private universities and teaching hospitals.
Baffa’s stance emerged from his position paper presented at the recent public hearing organised by House of Representative Committee on Education over a Bill seeking inclusion of private universities and allied institutions from benefiting from intervention.
He said clauses 72a and 73 of the TETFund Act 2011, “was not broken and does not require fixing.
“Again, Mr. Chairman, when intending interested persons wishing to establish a private university applies to NUC, one of the requirements is that they provide an evidence of certain quantum of resources available for the establishment and maintenance of the university.
“If after granting the license they would turn round and be requesting for money from government, it means that what they presented as evidence is not correct and this should be reason to withdraw the licence.
“If ETF, the precursor TETFund, was established to arrest rot and decay and was established to avoid government from charging tuition fee, how could tuition-charging institutions ask to draw from TETFund? This defeats the essence of establishing ETF and of establishing TETFund,” he said.
Baffa said “Just like workshops of colleges of engineering, just like workshops of biochemistry students, just like laboratories of biology students, just like the laboratories of computer science students, medical teaching hospitals were laboratories and are still laboratories.
“They were transferred from universities and huge bureaucracy was introduced around the administration and management of teaching hospitals. This bureaucracy is a misnomer and it is distorting how medical education should be delivered in our country. It is distorting how medical practice should be conducted in our country and this needs to be changed”, he said.
Lending his voice in defence of TETFund, National Universalities Commission (NUC) Executive Secretary, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, advised the House of Representatives to authorise the commission to include a statement in the licences issued to private universities to read “no recourse to public funds” so that any attempt to draw from public fund would lead to revocation of the licenses.
He described the proposal to include federal tertiary hospitals as an anomalous decision taken to soothe the ego of certain individuals who have put medical education in serious jeopardy and by the same token put medical practice in a quagmire in the country.
Rasheed said NUC had convened a meeting with stakeholders to discuss the state of medical education in the country and expressed hope that he would return to the House with the outcome of the meeting.
OAU students decry off-campus rent increase
Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, students have lamentation of high cost of accommodation outside the campus occasioned by policy of the institution.
The new policy had banned unauthorised students from residing in the hostels, marking a departure from what was obtainable before.
The students also said landlords have some arbitrary clauses in their tenancy agreement to protect their interest and to prevent tenants from raising their voices.
The owners of houses on their part argued that there was no law stipulating the amount to charge tenants.
“It is appalling for me to receive call from my landlord telling me that he increased the house rent from N10,000 monthly to N20,000 and I have to pay advance for six months if I want to retain my rent.
“I called others and they told me the same thing. Upon resumption for the new session, he (landlord) forced me and a co-tenant to vacate the house following our refusal to pay the unjustifiable and exploitative hiked amount,” Tunde Okeowo, a student of Department of History said.
Another student in College of Health Sciences, Tumininu Fatoki, told our correspondent that students can no longer cope with the hike.
“I live in Asherifa and the situation in that axis is to tense and becoming unbearable. A room self-contain of N75, 000 yearly has now increased to N150,000 without explanation. All efforts to persuade my landlord to reduce the rent failed.
“The most painful thing is that he does not maintain the house and lacks decent toilet facility. We hope Osun state government come up with a law to regulate house rent.” (NAN)
