University: There Is A Worrisome Decline of Infrastructure In Tertiary Institutions—Prof Bogoro
Olusegun HOSEA. 23rd March, 2024.
Former Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Fund- TETFUND, in Nigeria, Prof Suleiman Elias Bogoro has said before the advent of the Education Trust Fund now TETFUND, our Tertiary Institutions had. been described as glorified secondary school as most of the infrastructural development in most of these universities have been in a state of worrisome decline standard.
Author:Chief Basorun Seinde Arogbofa
Speaking during the book launch of Chief Basorun Seinde Arogbofa, today in Akure, Prof Bogoro said , it was the intervention of the TETFUND in most of these universities that revived the dilapidated structure in our institutions.
In his words, .. on that day when we negotiated under the military Administration of Ibrahim Babangida between 1988 and 1992 and got ETF now TETFUND of today. At that time we say Nigeria universities were glorified secondary school even in the context of infrastructure, there were factually no respectable infrastructure in our universities, you would be proud of …”
According to him, today the TETFUND have make a difference in most of our universities as there were good infrastructural development in all the universities in the country. He said today you could see good laboratories,good road network across the universities courtesy of the TETFUND. He said if you took away the activities of the organization, you could imagine what our Colleges of education, polytechnic and universities would have been. He said during his tenure he ensured that with the significant of infrastructure, we must go into what we called content component both tangible one as well as intangible one. He said the tangible contents include the faculty which included the lectures , the research as well as good function able laboratory in the University. He said today, we thanked God that the laboratories in the universities are doing well in time of what they licensed them to do in time of analytical analysis of the research work.
In another development, Prof Bogoro said the president has promised the university lecturers in his inaugural speech that there would not be strike anymore in our universities and that he also promised the students a loan scheme opportunity for them to complete their education. He said the policy is a good one as it would help the less privilege students to cope with the challenges of increased in the school fees among .
.He also talked about the condition of the service for teachers as being announced by the government but not sure of the level of compliance by most of the state government and the Federal of which he believes that these are top priority now .
Prof Bogoro spoke on the issue of out of the school children of which government is now addressing.,He explained that action is also going on at the top priority of which he said that with the issue of the improvement in the condition of service for Teachers now , he said he believes that we are getting to the direction of the renew hope of the Mr President.
Speaking on the private universities clamouring for TETFUND assistance, the Prof. said the number of the private universities outweigh the government owned universities but intime of the population, the government schools have more population than these private universities and therefore the wisdom applied then still remains valid as more students of the poor still attended the public Universities than the private one .
He said some of these students paid in Dollars and these are the reasons considered by the government not to extend their support to all these private universities. He said but then , TETFUND has admitted the private universities by partnering with them in time of carrying out research. He said that though they main not be a principal Investigators but they are co partner in research collaboration programme as they could fund them up to 50% of the total research grants cost intime of any research intervention for the development of our economy.
Present at the event are HE Lucky Orimisan Ayedatiwa,ably represented by his Chief of Staff Mr Segun Omojuwa, The Leader of Afenifere,pa Fashonranti, The former Governor of Ondo State, DR Olusegun Mimiko, the Governor of Nasarawa state Alumakura and other top government functionaries are present at the colourful book presentation.
