The source of funding to TETFund is 2.0 per cent of companies’ annual profits in Nigeria.

Disclosing that 90 per cent of physical structures in universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education are a product of TETFund, the President of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, warned that “TETFund has been instrumental in transforming tertiary education across Nigeria for over 30 years. Scrapping it would devastate public universities and deny access to education for children from low-income families.”

The Zonal Coordinator of ASUU-Nsukka Zone, Raphael Amokaha, said the impact of TETFund can be felt in 244 public tertiary institutions: 96 universities, 72 polytechnics, and 76 colleges of education.

Despite TETFund’s interventions in the tertiary education subsector, the tertiary institutions still wallow in neglect, which has triggered repeated strikes.

The Federal Government has not serviced a N1.2 trillion memorandum of understanding it signed with ASUU for the revitalisation of universities and payment of earned allowances since 2009. Unwisely, the Federal Government keeps adding new universities.

It is worth asking how SELF will take care of the infrastructure, research, grants, scholarships, and development needs of the old and new tertiary institutions being established by the Tinubu administration.

It is not too hard for Nigerians to see that NELFUND is a smokescreen for this administration’s mercantile approach to education.

When the students’ loans board was introduced last year, it was applauded as a relief for indigent students. But with the attempt to make it gulp 100 per cent of the development levy accruable to educational institutions from 2030 and beyond, students will be given loans to learn in empty laboratories, ill-equipped libraries, dilapidated classrooms and ultimately receive globally uncompetitive education.

The Tinubu administration allocated 6.39 per cent and 7.0 per cent to education in the 2024 and 2025 budgets respectively. These paltry allocations expose Tinubu’s disdain for public education.

It is unthinkable that Nigeria is thinking of scrapping TETFUND, when Ghana has copied the winning formula from Nigeria by establishing the Ghana Education Trust Fund, to transform its education system.

At the basic level, Nigeria’s 20.1 million out-of-school children figure is the second largest globally behind India’s. It is a no-brainer that Nigeria needs more investment in education, not to cut a funding source as it wants to do with TETFund.

The government must correct this misstep and sustain the TETFund to accelerate education development and make education more competitive.