TETFund Denies Deliberate Omission Of Scholars’ Names In Presidential Bailout
By Alice Etuka, Abuja
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has refuted allegations labelled against it by a group of Nigerian lecturers studying under the sponsorship of the TETFund Scholarship for Academic Staff (TSAS) programme.
This is according to a statement issued by the TETFund Spokesperson, Abdulmumin Oniyangi for the Executive Secretary of the Fund on Friday, August 2, 2024.
According to the statement, the lecturers were alleging deliberate omission of their names from the bailout approved by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for stranded TETFund scholars abroad.
It said, “the Fund specifically notes the case of one Kamal Adewole Saka, a lecturer at Federal University, Oye Ekiti, who was awarded a TETFund scholarship for Ph.D. in Psychology at Girne American University, Cyprus to the tune of N27,573,350.00 and has lately been in the media wrongly accusing staff of the Fund of “embezzling his N10 million scholarship grant” when, in actual sense, his full tuition had since been paid directly to the institution since 3rd November, 2022.
“Although the Fund had reported expending over N3.8 billion as bailout to about 1500 stranded Nigerian scholars studying abroad under the TSAS programme to cushion the effect of the current exchange rate in compliance with Mr. President’s directive, it has become imperative to give detailed background and steps taken generally by the Fund and to specifically address the disinformation being peddled by Kamal Adewole Saka”.
The Fund however noted that, Scholars were affected by the exchange rate fluctuations due to non-operation of a domiciliary account by their home institutions, which left them indebted on their programme. While others changed their institutions of study based on the approvals obtained from their home institutions, contrary to the Fund’s guidelines.
