By Felix Khanoba
The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono, has expressed the readiness of the agency to deepen collaboration with universities in the United Kingdom, UK.
Echono made this known while receiving a UK government team on international education in Abuja, on Monday.
He said “over the years, TETFund has sponsored several students to UK universities. We have MoUs with some UK universities and want to expand that to other aspects.”
According to the Executive Secretary, an improved partnership with UK universities would also make it difficult for TETFund scholars to abscond after their programmes in Britain’s institutions.
” The government has invested heavily in the education of these scholars, and it is disheartening to see many of them choose to stay abroad after their studies. Our goal is to foster collaboration with British universities to create a mechanism that encourages the return of these scholars to Nigeria.
“And these are things that we were looking at institutional ways of doing that, for example, where we see that where partnerships already exist between our institutions and those abroad, they can share this period of training for example to ensure that they complete their training back home. These are some of the solutions that we are looking at in these engagements that we have,” he said.
Speaking further, Echono said TETFund is also improving facilities in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria to attract international faculties as well as enhancing collaboration with UK institutions to foster linkages.
He said that the collaboration with UK institutions would focus on skills development for Nigerian institutions, adding that the fund is currently ranking its 253 beneficiary institutions, using peremiters such as how many multidisciplinary research they have been able to undertake, their degree of internationalisation, among others.
He added that the fund wants to ensure that tertiary institutions in Nigeria are much more competitive globally and their graduates internationally recognised.
Earlier, the UK Government International Education Champion, Sir Steve Smith, who led the delegation said the UK’s mandate to his team is to deepen relations with the education and research systems of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Endonesia, Vietnam and India.
Smith, who was a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Exeter, said the UK recognises the importance of retaining highly-skilled individuals in their home countries and acknowledged that the brain drain issue affects both Nigeria and the international community.
“We understand the concerns of the Nigerian government, and we share the vision of providing quality education to talented individuals. By working together, we can create opportunities for these scholars to contribute to the progress of Nigeria while furthering their academic careers,” he said.
He noted that it is a lot cheaper to study here than it is to travel to the UK for three or four years and study.
Smith disclosed that the team has been partnering with the National Universities Commission, NUC, on the guidelines for transnational education and that it was reviewing a series of guidelines by the commission.
