Federal Government has ordered tertiary institutions to submit reports of intervention funds from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund that remain unutilized within the next 30 days.
Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, gave the directive in Abuja today during a meeting with heads of institutions.
Dr Alausa noted that the Ministry has been faced with a dilemma over the issue of allocations that are not being put to good use.
He stated that resources that could have been used to develop infrastructure in institutions have remained idle due to bottlenecks.
The Minister also announced that capacity-building Programme would be introduced to strengthen project management, compliance, and reporting, alongside mentorship initiatives. Quarterly reviews will track progress and compliance, with sanctions for institutions that fail to utilise funds effectively.
According to him, transparency will be enhanced through a public dashboard showing disbursement and utilisation data, and institutions will be required to publish project progress reports.
Dr Alausa also emphasized that the success of this initiative depends on strong collaboration among stakeholders.
This directive is coming as no surprise, as TETFund has repeatedly expressed concern over the significant amount of unused allocations by higher institutions in Nigeria.
It would be recalled that in July this year, TETFund threatened to delist institutions that fail to access and utilise their allocations as the funds would be diverted to institutions that are up to date with accessing and utilizng disbursements.
