Total education budget not enough for TETfund intervention – C’tte chairman

Nazifi Abdullahi Darma is a professor of Development Economics at the University of Abuja, and co-chairman and coordinator of impact assessment ad hoc committee of TETfund interventions in 20 years. In this chat with UJI ABDULLAHI ILIYASU, he discloses the efforts the three TETFund ad hoc committees are making to accomplish a thorough job and sundry issues.

As part of impact assessment committee, how far have you gone in assignment?

As part of reinvigorating forces, Professor Elias Suleiman Bogoro inaugurated three committees in order to refurbish TETfund towards achieving its mandate in intervention in order to attain quality education in Nigeria’s tertiary schools.  Number one is the issue of Technical Advisory Group (TAG), which is the highest intellectual decision-making body. Number one is book development committee, research and development committee which my co-chairman, Professor Njoku who is now the deputy governor-elect of Imo state, is chairing.   The third committee is the Technical Action Committee on Impact Assessment (TACIA) of TETfund interventions in 20 years.

What we have done  so far is enough, but because of   lack of publicity some people may constrained to think we have not been doing anything. Since our inauguration in September last year, what we did is to we have a series of meetings to define modalities to carry out our assignments based on the terms defined by TETfund. And let me tell you with all sincerity and appreciation that this is the first time a public-sector-funded institution in Nigeria is forming an independent self-evaluation team to assess its activities by outsiders. This is very unprecedented in the history of public expenditure in Nigeria.  

With this independent assessment team, we are now in the process of telling TETFund where it is doing well so that it can increase performance and where it is underperforming so that it can make corrections.

We have had several meetings with three to six members of TACIA. We developed modalities; we created a sub-team which we called core technical team, composed of 12 members of the 63 that are well grounded as far as evaluation is concerned. We develop a comprehensive work plan and this started with the development of tools and instruments for the assignment. We have developed questionnaires and questions for the interview guide as well as focal discussion group question guide.

We have got documents from TETfund as far as every aspect of intervention is concerned. Our impact assessment is looking at 15 different areas of TETFund intervention in the last 20 years. The executive secretary told us in clear and unambiguous terms that there is no hindrance to what we can do in order to find out the positive and negative impacts of TETFund interventions in the last 20 years.

 After developing the instrument, and in line with international best standard, we are using what is called a tool by World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank and by all international agencies.

We have 37 teams; each team composed of a team leader and a research assistant who will guide the team leader. We have other members of TACIA who will serve as quality control experts in order to provide something like a check to what the two leaders and research assistants are doing because we want to undertake a job that is thoroughly objective.

 The team and research assistant will carry out the administration of the questionnaire being undertaken by the focus group discussion and undertake the interview with all relevant stakeholders. And the quality control expert who is a member of the technical advisory committee is not involved in such activities, but will be able to follow the checklist of the activities of the team leader and research assistant so that they do what is right and to our stated criteria.  Now in order to provide proper objectivity we administer a method using a tablet. And that is supposed to take picture of every single project.  It is aligned to Google account and server so that you can see the projects in real term online; the time they are doing the work, what is the location, the day, the hour and the minute so that there is authenticity that projects are on ground.

The 37 teams, including FCT, were able to conduct over 15730 interviews, focus group discussions and question sessions with relevant stakeholders with all the beneficiary institutions, boards of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. We even have liaison with student union representatives and academic and non academic staff of beneficiary institutions and even immediate communities within the environments.

At the end of the day we have one-on-one relationship with each and every single beneficiary institutions and stakeholders.

 There is the need to assess various social returns on investment associated with the various aspects of the interventions. Because if you site an institution the benefits do not stop at the community it is sited because of the   positive multiplier effects associated with the projects.

We are also trying to measure to what extent has the funding of TETfund and the reinvigoration of the institutions has created positive externalities of the immediate communities and as such being able to improve their life.

Now the 37 different teams have conducted their activities from September 3 to December 18. And it took almost two weeks to write their report. We have composed another team to look at each of the report and find out what are the specific data gaps that we may need to fill before writing the final.

We take each and every report of beneficiary institution and request for data gap that we found on those representatives, and thereafter we will have a team of four eminent professors of English who will look at the report and edit it thoroughly before making a final submission.

Do you think it is possible to carry out your assignments without interference?

  During the inauguration the executive secretary of TETfund promised us non-interference, and to the best of my ability, he has never in any way either he or board member or directors interfered in any of our activities and the day the interference comes, I will tender my resignation and leave.  So let me say in clear and unequivocal terms that the executive secretary, his directors, board  members and the acting chairman of the board, Professor  Abubakar Rasheed,   have never in any way interfered in our work. That is why we have free hand to interact with beneficiary institutions, vice chancellors, rectors and provosts of colleges of education.

We are in course to a qualitative report that will give a value for money orientation associated with hundreds of billions or trillions that have been spent.  Today almost three trillions have been sunk into various beneficiary institutions in the last 20 years of TETFund interventions.

Why is the building of physical infrastructure still ongoing in public higher institutions after the executive secretary had promised that TETFund was going pay more attention to research and development?

The reality is that the current carrying capacity of     our various institutions is extremely low relative to number of applicants. In as much as we want to concentrate more on research and development to attain a knowledge-driven economy, we cannot abandon infrastructure component altogether, rather more attention will be given to research and development. Candidates who apply to our universities are over 1.5 million and the total carrying capacity for all private and public institutions in Nigeria is less than one million, approximately five to six hundred thousand. You can see that you cannot stop the physical infrastructure aspect of the intervention. That is why in 2020 TETFund is increasing money for research and development from 5 billion  to 7.5 billion.

Is it possible for Nigerian universities to attract foreign academics in view of the differences in exchange rates between Nigeria and other countries?    

   You know every country has an ambition and works in the context of the ambition. This is an ambition initiated by the executive secretary of National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Rasheed. And the reality is that in the early 70’s and 80’s,   because of the exchange of our naira to other convertible currencies, we were able to attract a lot of foreign scholars.  Beyond this there are specific strategies you can adopt to attract international scholars, particularly within the context of visiting scholarship.

Visiting scholars cannot come to your universities without minimal infrastructure and standard. What TETfund is doing is to be able to upgrade the standard for research and teaching in line with international practice so as to attract, at least in a short term, visiting scholars that can complement our local intellectuals and scholarship. And secondly, the issue of developing the universities to be in line with international benchmark is an ambition that every single Nigerian, particularly those of us working in the university system, should work towards achieving. And that achievement is a function of multidimensional criteria and part of that criteria is the issue of funding and  international recognition of your scholars, possibly the number of Nobel prize winners we are able to have and the number of lecturers-students ratio, the quality of your laboratories and number of students that have access to quality library material and online journals and a lot of other criteria that satisfy the basis for ranking customarily. Unfortunately the actual public expenditure in education in Nigeria is one of the lowest when you compare it with other emerging economies. You could imagine what tertiary institutions would have been in the absence of TETfund intervention. Therefore, the intervention will go a long way to achieving those criteria.

Why do state executives establish universities and shift responsibility to TETfund?

I am using this opportunity to tell state executives not to just establish universities but provide complementary funding for them so that they will not just rely on TETfund funding. With federal universities we need to have a realistic discussion, for even if all the money budgeted for education is given to them they may not be enough to meet the criteria. So we need to start talking around public private funding of university education. The reality is that most students that are able to get admission into universities went through private schools or coaching that cost money. Averagely it can’t be less than 50 to 100 thousand per year.  Now if you ask students to pay an equivalent of 500 dollars per year, it will go a long way to assist universities have a lot of resources in order to provide expanded facilities. At the same time everybody wants to have quality education, but quality education have a cost. That cost can’t be fully provided by the government alone.

Do you think it is important to extend TETfund intervention to private institutions?

It is a complete selfishness on the part of any private university to ask for funding from TETFund. TETFund is funded by taxpayers money with two percent of accessible tax of all private companies operating in Nigeria. Private universities are operated not on the basis of social responsibility but profit. We cannot use taxpayers’ money to fund private businesses. I don’t support it and I will never support it.

How does TETfund intervene in more than one university in one state?

  The board of TETFund in its wisdom has criteria for funding state universities, polytechnics and colleges of education because of the opportunistic proliferation of institutions by state governments. There are criteria for selective funding of state universities based on availability of resources. 

Leave a Reply