The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), says it is considering suspending foreign training for a year or two due to the recent exchange rate adjustments,
Its Executive Secretary, Mr. Sonny Echono, made this known on Tuesday in Abuja when he appeared before the Ad hoc Committee of the House of Representatives to give insight on the alleged missing N2.3 trillion in TETFUND.
The House had last Tuesday set up the Committee, headed by Hon. Oluwole Oke, to investigate the alleged abuse of N2.3 trillion generated from the Tertiary Education Tax by the Fund from 2011 to 2023.
Echono explained that some of the tax comes in foreign currencies to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), but when it is time to pay fees for scholars abroad, the apex bank will insist on TETFUND sourcing forex by itself.
According to him, We operate a system where our forex is being sold on our behalf at an official rate and we apply like anybody else to get it, sometimes it leads to additional cost.
His words: “Currently as I speak, we are in consultations with all our stakeholders to suspend foreign training for a year or two. This is because of the recent exchange rate adjustments, we are unable to continue based on our disbursement guideline.
“The money we allocated in naira cannot cover the dollar requirement for training. Those who are currently there, we now need more naira to pay for the dollar that is required for their annual fees. We are trying to put a hold.”
Echono noted that most of the training now will be done locally through experienced, first-generation universities.
He added: “This way we can retain our resources in house and cope with the change of foreign exchange variation.”
The Executive secretary also lamented that some of the unpatriotic scholars absconded after training.
“Some of the scholars that has been sponsored, unpatriotically when they go, they enjoy our scholarship, acquire a higher degree, they refuse to come back, it has become a major crisis.
“We are working with the staff unions for stringent and effective measures to be
While puncturing the claim by the committee, Echono, said the allegation was not true.
He explained that the actual sum generated from education tax from 2011 to 2022 was N2.476 trillion, out of which the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) retained N99 billion as cost of collection.
He said the federal government since 2013 had borrowed N371.3 billion from the Fund out of which it has paid N48 billion so far.