President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund has spent N837 billion on infrastructural development in tertiary institutions and capacity building for lecturers, Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, has revealed.
The minister stated that the investment was aimed at improving the quality of service delivery in the education sector.
He stated this during the 8th edition of the Weekend Ministerial Press Briefings on Thursday in Abuja.
Adamu pointed out that TETFund has increased the number of beneficiary institutions accessing its interventions in order to keep pace with newly established tertiary institutions.
He said: “We have also increased the number of beneficiary institutions accessing these interventions to keep pace with newly established tertiary institutions. Project monitoring has also been stepped up to ensure quality delivery.
“Investment in Library and Library services is being intensified to ensure that we keep pace with digital learning. All these are aimed at ensuring qualitative education at tertiary levels.”
The minister explained that access to quality tertiary education remained a major challenge in the country.
To address the growing demand for tertiary education, the minister said the government granted licenses for the establishment of 30 universities, 71 polytechnics and 27 colleges of education when it took over power in 2015.
He said: “Access to quality education has been a major challenge to our people over the years. Apart from many other factors militating against the legitimate desire of our people to quality education, the astronomical increase in the country’s population, now estimated at 180 million people has not helped matters.
“As part of efforts aimed at addressing the persistent problem of access to university education, occasioned by the low carrying capacity of existing universities as against the growing number of qualified candidates, the Federal Government during the period under review established or licensed a total of 30 universities, bringing the total number of universities in Nigeria to one hundred and sixty-nine.
“When we came into office in 2015, the total number of polytechnics/Monotechnics/Innovative enterprise institutions in the county stood at 298 with a combined carrying capacity of 424,715 Spaces. To expand access to Polytechnic/Monotechnics/Innovative enterprise institutions, we established or licensed a total of 71 such institutions during the period under review, with a carrying capacity of 93,228 spaces.
“In the last four years, we have granted approval to twenty-seven (27) new NCE awarding institutions across the six geopolitical zones, with a combined carrying capacity of sixty thousand, two hundred spaces (60,200).”
HARRISON EDEH, ABUJA
