The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETTFund) said it
would from January 2025 halt its foreign scholarship funding for Nigerian
academics under the TETFund Scholarship for Academic Staff (TSAS) scheme.
The Fund disclosed the decision on Thursday in a
statement by its spokesperson, Abdulmumin Oniyangi.
Mr Oniyangi noted that the suspension is in response
to the “excessive cost” of training in foreign institutions as well as the
“high rate of abscondment of foreign scholars”.
The TETFund spokesperson said the board of trustees of
the agency has approved the suspension.
He added that the suspension is effective from 1
January 2025 with the exception of scholars already in the programme.
“TETFund scholars who have already enrolled in foreign
institutions would continue to draw down on their scholarships till the end of
their programmes,” he said.
“It is expected that the suspension will conserve and
reduce the pressure on foreign exchange rate, boost investment and local
capacity in Nigerian tertiary educational institutions and significantly
increase the number of beneficiaries of the intervention.”
Increasing cost
PREMIUM TIMES reported last year that Nigerian
scholars from Malaysia, India and Kenya wrote TETFund, seeking bailout funds
and increased allowances after inflation and the floating of the naira affected
their upkeep.
Mr Oniyangi told PREMIUM TIMES at the time that the
agency was harvesting recommendations to devise a solution to the challenge.
Meanwhile, TETFund had also blamed the issues arising
from the foreign exchange crisis on the failure of the parent institutions’
refusal to follow the guidelines laid down by the Fund. The Fund said it had
modified its mode of operation since 2019 to ensure that the fluctuating
foreign exchange doesn’t affect its scholars.
The agency explained that it pays the tuition fees of
the scholars directly to the foreign institutions so scholars and their parent
institutions do not worry about the foreign exchange.
The Fund said it also disburses the complete living
expenses of the scholars to their parent institutions and directs the
institutions to keep the funds in a domiciliary account to avoid the
fluctuations that may arise as a result of a change in exchange rate.
However, some institutions fail to domicile the fund
in the domiciliary account, and rather keep it local currency, leading to cases
where the scholars find themselves in desperate situations, TETFund has said.
“It is pertinent to state that despite the requirement
of operating domiciliary accounts for living expenses of foreign scholars, some
beneficiary institutions still kept such funds in local currency. Consequently,
due to non-compliance to this requirement, scholars are often caught up by the
volatility of foreign exchange arising from the practice of keeping their
stipends in local currency,” the agency had said.
Transnational education
TETFund said it is collaborating with the National
Universities Commission (NUC) to intensify efforts to implement the
Trans-national Education Guidelines “recently approved by President Bola
Tinubu”.
“Under the scheme, top ranking institutions from the
United Kingdom, the United States of America, Malaysia, Brazil, etc. will be
encouraged to mount programmes in partnership with Nigerian institutions to
offer the same standard and quality of courses that are obtainable in their
home institutions,” he said.
“Beneficiary Institutions of TETFund have been advised
to prioritise their training needs for implementation in Nigerian institutions
and ensure strict compliance.”
The NUC has since 2022 noted that it developed a
guideline for the implementation of a transnational education “to guide foreign
investment and partnerships between foreign universities and their Nigerian
counterparts.”
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