By Tersoo Adagher
In quantitative terms, it takes sunlight an average of eight minutes and twenty seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth. This is what scientists call speed of light. This is also the corollary of happenings in the Nigerian foremost Education intervention agency, the tertiary education trustfund,(TETFUND).
Poignant is the fact that One of the stated policy goals of the Tinubu administration is an overhaul of Nigeria’s education system to make it more inclusive as well as responsive to global realities. One of the cardinal pillars of this policy is tertiary education, which had suffered greatly in the recent past from poor infrastructure, poor funding and demotivated staff.
More over, the key agency of government towards awards achieving this transformation of the tertiary education sector is TETFund and this agency has performed creditably – especially since Arc Echono, an experienced technocrat, took over as the Executive Secretary.
Perhaps, the robust transformation and painstaking efforts that has changed the tertiary education landscape in recent times is in tandem with the renewed Hope agenda of mr. President. Because, even the harshest cynics in town would concede that there are unassailable facts on ground to establish the potency of the government’s intervention agency efforts.
This is why at the 9th Africa Leadership Magazine Summit held recently in London, United Kingdom, Echono was honored with the Africa Leadership Excellence Award in Educational Development from the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, HE. Philip Davis.
The award is sequel to Echono’s sagacity to navigating the trenches to dish best educational practices, and to set policies that would ensure total transformation in the education sector.
Also, the ES has spanned plenty effort to drive the infusion of technology into curriculum and instructional delivery process in Nigeria public tertiary institutions.
To this end, TETFund recently emerged as winner of the 2024 Anthology Visionary Award for Leadership in transforming education through technology.
The event took place in Orlando World Center in United States and had a global audience of over 2000 participants drawn from the Academia. Also when echono was recognized as the Outstanding Public Servant of the Year, by Champions Newspaper limited, he maintained that the reforms currently going on at Tetfund are deliberate measures to make the agency work better and deliver on it’s mandate to the people of Nigeria. Stressing that the testimonies from the beneficiary institutions, critical stakeholders and must especially the students are positive and encouraging.
This testimonies by beneficiary institutions was further re-echoed by the vice chancellor university of Benin, professor Lilian Salami, in an exclusive interview with Tribune newspaper of 30th, June, 2024, were she described Tetfund as a “messiah” that came to rescue tertiary education in Nigeria. Stating that the current executive Secretary of TETFUND and his management team has given a new life and fresh dimensions to the management of the fund, more especially in the area of research and the promotion of cutting edge technology to drive education and learning protocols.
Speaking in the same tune, the former vice chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe university, Awka, professor Charles Esimone in an exclusive interview with the Cablenews on the 6th f April, 2024, in Awka, anambra state, opined that Tetfund under the leadership of Echono is result-oriented.
Concurring with the perspective that the caliber of higher education constitutes the engine room of any emerging economy, Professor Esimone reiterated that the new leadership at Tetfund is characterized by revival of confidence among Nigerian in the funding agency owing to the ground breaking strategies the fund has showcased in recent times.
More poignant in the narrative is the evidently busy schedule of the fund in keeping with its mandate and the transparency in its corporate governance and business processes.
The trick-down effect of the paradigm shift is the result we are all seeing today and the testimonies of stakeholders and Nigerians in general. Particularly the reform of the procurement process to make it smoother, eliminate corruption, reduce delivery time of projects, prevent cost escalation and improve general efficiency in the discharge of the Fund’s mandate.
As part of the reform process, all projects to be executed by the Fund are planned, packaged and selected by the beneficiary institutions for review and concurrence of the Fund. It also ensures that there are no more TETFund or vendor-promoted projects, as the needs of the institutions shall prevail.
It is therefore incumbent that for the man at the helm of top educational drive, like Echono, advocating and or charting policy and blueprint direction is key to actualizing the aspirations of a nation bent on forging a global roadmap.
Although TETFund under the leadership of Sonny Echono has obviously surpassed expectations. However, like Oliver twist, the quest to improve the variables and stem the obstacles has remained an unending pursuit.
It is worthy to note that TETFund has assisted greatly in bridging gaps in Nigeria.
It is gathered that the Agency has funded many innovative initiatives such as Research for Impact (R4i) and TETFund Alliance for Innovative Research (TETFAIR) targeted at deepening impactful research and uptake of research outcomes with potentials for commercialization.
It would be recalled that in 2023, over 600 lecturers from Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions benefited from the R4i programme and have developed 95 prototypes from the initiative.
Also, 44 teams of 176 researchers have been trained from tertiary institutions from the six geo-political zones, and the first cohorts have designed 16 prototypes, one of them being a hearing aid that is self-programmable, affordable and more suitable for African market.
The Executive Secretary of TetFund has said “the team responsible for the design participated in the ARC Centre for Digital Innovation Entrepreneurship programme at the Sheba Hospital in Israel, where they presented their innovation at the international community.”
While delivering a keynote address at the Summit in London on the theme, “Africa Unleashed: Navigating Disruptions, Enhancing Opportunities,” Echono stated that that “Africa has commenced its journey towards repositioning itself in global affairs, and advocated that policies and blueprints that will help the continent in navigating the identified obstacles and optimize opportunities for its greatness must be considered as paramount.”
According to Echono, “unlocking Africa’s immense potential requires a multilayered approach and should feature a convergence of different pathways in ensuring the continent attains the desired greatness.
Adagher TERSOO, a public affair’s analyst.
