By Oyinkansayo Wole-Bodunde.
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has suspended its foreign scholarship program for lecturers in public tertiary institutions due to financial unsustainability and a high rate of beneficiaries failing to return to Nigeria after completing their studies.
According to TETFund Executive Secretary Sonny Echono, the program’s suspension is attributed to two main factors. One reason is high foreign exchange rates, resulting in significant financial burden on the agency. Echono said, “It’s a cost-benefit analysis. We are faced with two challenges. The first is the exchange rate differential. In some institutions, we are getting close to 100 million for one person when you convert from pounds to naira.”
The second reason is that many beneficiaries fail to return to Nigeria after completing their studies, despite receiving full sponsorship. Echono said, “The second part is that many of the beneficiaries were not being kind to the country. They make us sponsor them, and when they finish their programmes, they refuse to come back.”
Echono emphasized that the suspension is not absolute, and waivers are granted in exceptional cases where the course of study is not available in Nigerian Universities. He said, “The bridge we’ve created is that we are now allowing for some exceptions — in very exceptional cases — where the courses of study are not available locally. So, we give exemptions.”
The agency has decided to redirect resources to support local training of academic staff, which Echono described as more cost-effective and impactful. He said, “The majority of our scholars used to be from here. We have a local component, and we have the foreign component. So the local component has now received a boost because we have not reduced our funding for academic staff training; instead, we have increased it.”
Echono cited an example of a recent waiver granted to an aviation university, saying, “We just gave them a waiver less than two weeks ago because some of the specific courses are new and not available in the country.”
