By Felix Khanoba
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) says the delay on the submission of its 2014 to 2016 accounts to relevant government’s bodies was occasioned by the absence of its Board of Trustees at the early stage of the present administration.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof Suleiman Bogoro, stated this in Abuja on Monday while responding to a National Assembly inquiry on a report of the Auditor General of the Federation, which raised issues on alleged infractions in the submission of the three years accounts.
Bogoro, who spoke during his appearance before the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, chaired by Hon. Oluwole Oke, noted that all affected the accounts were however, duly submitted in 2016 and 2018.
“We had a lacuna of the Board of Trustees because between 2015 to 2016, there was no board, that contributed to the delay; we assure you that we would not ordinarily want to delay the audited accounts,” he said.
While saying the account of 2017 was rendered in 2018 and signed by his predecessor, Dr Abdullahi Baffa and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bogoro said that of 2018 was submitted in December of 2019.
On the working relationship between TETFund and the auditor general’s office, Bogoro said the latter had been undertaking performance audit and the Fund has always been one of the agencies that the office audits every year and it has the report.
The TETFund boss said the agency has also engaged the services of an independent impact assessment committee to look into the activities of the Fund in the past twenty years and the report would be made ready in two weeks.
“The Honourable Minister of Education is expected to personally present the report to the entire country. And we did that for the last 20 years including ETF time before the law changed to TETFund,” he said.
Speaking further, Bogoro revealed that the TETFund was in the process of engaging new auditors as it had written to the Auditor General of the Federation for a list of certified auditors in compliance with the law instead of renewing those engaged in 2014.
Responding, the chairman of the committee, confirmed the submission of the Fund’s accounts of 2014, 2015 and 2016 in 2018.
Oke urged the Auditor General to look into the performance audit of agencies apart from financial audit, stating that the accuracy of figures may not imply that all is well with agencies.
