The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) yesterday visited the Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo (FUNAI), Ebonyi State to sensitive staff of the institution on the modalities for accessing fund to improve their academic and experiential capacities.
Receiving the team from Abuja, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Chinedum Nwajiuba noted that the University was among the twelve Federal Universities established in 2011, stressing that TETFund has been handy in helping the University meet some of its infrastructural demands.


The Vice Chancellor who was represented in the event by his deputy, Prof. Sunday Elom expressed his delight for the sensitization visit, appealing to the Fund to intervene in bridging the infrastructural gap in the institution occasioned by the economic crunch that has grounded infrastructural and human development to a near halt in most public Universities.
In his keynote address, the Executive Secretary of TETFUND, Dr. Abdullahi Baffa, who was represented in the event by Mrs. Briggs Nguoba, outlined the notable challenges facing organizations in their quest to access funds promptly and cautioned end users (universities and staff) to diligently follow the guidelines to avoid delays and outright refusal.


Outlining some of the numerous challenges, he stressed that lack of proper scope and requirements for TETFund; lack of strategic and operational plans; non-conformity to guiding rules; insufficient documentation; faulty observance of due process in the engagement of contractors; use of non-professionals as desk officers among others constitute major impediments.
Engineer Tunde Olakunrin while also speaking, declared that the era of bogus spending, unretired account and absence of evaluation and monitoring was over; maintaining that before the second and final tranches of fund could be released to universities, there must be thorough inspection to ascertain their degree of compliance to previous releases.
Optimist Yohanah, in his presentation on the guidelines and modalities for accessing academic staff training and development (AST & D) and conferences stated that TETFUND sponsorship in that category was strictly for M. Sc and Ph.D scholars that applied to study in top ranking Nigerian and world Universities that are captured in the World University Ranking of Higher Education.
He warned that applications to online campuses and unapproved degree awarding institutions by the National Universities Commission (NUC) are not honoured.
He further highlighted that a staff is due for conference once confirmed, insisting that such conference registration fee should not exceed one hundred thousand naira only and five days duration, adding that a candidate was expected to apply three (3) times a year because of traffic congestion of submitted application forms to avoid their applications to be overtaken by time.
He further stated that 3o% of the fund are meant for conferences while 70% are earmarked for academic purposes.
Angelo Abraham while presenting an overview on guidelines and modalities for accessing content-based intervention, opined that Universities have access to library development intervention, institution-based research, academic research journal intervention, academic manuscript to books intervention, national research fund (special intervention), and ICT support.
He maintained that opportunities abound to state and federal Universities to access these TETFUND interventions, urging FUNAI to key into it.
In her closing remarks, the Registrar of the university, Mrs. Odisa Okeke thanked the TETFund team for their sensitization, urging them to repeat the visit for proper integration