The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Dr. Abdullahi Bichi Baffa, in this chat with reporters talks about how he has handled some of the challenges and the plans for capacity development of lecturers in tertiary institutions in the next five years. Frank Ikpefan was there.
AS you preside over the affairs of TETFund, where do you place the Buhari Administration’s Thrust of Accountability and his anti-corruption drive?
In the first place, the agenda of the Buhari administration regarding accountability and the fight against corruption is the fulcrum upon which we anchor everything we do at the TETFund. Indeed, in all Ministries, and in all agencies of government. Speaking specifically about TETFund, the fight against corruption, the fight against impunity in administration and governance is the fulcrum upon which we build everything that we are doing. As a service agency, as an intervention agency, we know that value for money, protecting the public interest and protecting our investments are vital priorities.
Can you explain your reason for this position on the history of TETFund?
The recent history of TETFund before the coming in of the Buhari administration clearly shows that to reset the operations of the agency the number one priority must be to fight corruption, deal with fraud, fight incompetence and insincerity characterized some of the operations of the agency. So really, I must say that we have taken the anti-corruption drive of the Buhari administration as the number one priority as far as our operations are concerned.
If the history of TETFund you met was that bad, why the rush to conclude that the culture of impunity, corruption is dead in the agency?
It is not rocket science. It comes from the top. Once the head is firm, qualitative, and focused, the followership will queue in. And once you are determined to prevent corruption from taking place, to prevent fraud from taking place, you will not have even cause to penalize or to discipline anyone because it is not going to happen, in the first place. And if there were some isolated cases where people went out of their way to flout financial regulations, or engage in improper actions, despite every preventive measure that we have put in place, we take firm disciplinary actions. We set examples with them so that it serves as a deterrence to others not to get themselves involved in anything that is unethical, anything that is fraudulent, anything that is against the guidelines of the agency.We have fundamentally two documents as far as TETFund is concerned, namely: the law establishing the Agency and its Operational Guidelines. We always go by them strictly. But of course, there are subsidiary and other incidental guidelines and circulars.
Nigerians will want you to cite some of the rot you met at TETFund and how you dealt with them?
When we came, the house was almost upside down. Upside down in the sense that we met an agency where the primary purpose of establishing the agency, which is to intervene in specific areas regarding investments and financing was relegated to the background. The Annual Direct Disbursement (ADD) for the Year 2015 allocation was only 20% of the total allocation for that year, while Special Intervention which is discretionally was 80% of the allocation for that year! That is a recipe for corruption; that is a recipe for impunity; that is a recipe for fraud. Against this background, what we first did was to suspend projects under Special Intervention. For all the Special Intervention allocation for the Year 2014 and Year 2015 for which money had been disbursed already, we approved that they continued but ensured that they were done in accordance with the approval given. However, all other allocations and discretionary allocations for which TETFund has paid no money were cancelled. Interestingly, we made good savings of about N78 billion from that cancellation. We plowed that money into the Year 2016 allocation, and we were able to pursue the completion of those Special Projects as approved in the Approval-in-Principle, and as approved in the Bill of Quantities for which the institutions and the vendors have agreed.
How did the change come so swiftly, was it because any dubious contractor will not be easy to be dealt with?
In one of our meetings with the Heads of Institutions, we got them to involve law enforcement agencies because there were cases where contractors collected first tranche payment and disappeared. There were cases where contractors deployed to the site, started working and also disappeared. There were cases where contractors did not do up to half of the project, and they are claiming they have worked and want to be paid the close-out amount so that it would be taken as though they have completed the projects. There are also cases where the things that were in the Bill of Quantities were not what was supplied to the institutions. We identified all these cases, and we were able to resolve all of them. In many instances, contractors would come to me and say, for these and these things or projects, we have not been paid and I will tell them that we at TETFund, we don’t deal with contractors of Tertiary Education Institutions. I will say to them that our clients are the beneficiary institutions. I will ask them to go back to the institutions concerned. If you insisted that your project is meant to be A, B, C, but you have done only A, what happened to the rest? Contractors tend to influence the report that was sent to us at TETFund stating that the work has been completed, that they have finished the work and wanted to be paid, while in actual fact what is on the ground is totally different, they have not delivered on many things or provided what they are supposed to provide. Many of them realized that we have eyes and ears beyond the formal process. Indeed, we have eyes and ears beyond the Tertiary Education Trust Fund and we have means of knowing whether a project was done properly or if it was not done properly. So they return to the site. If they manage to complete the work, we pay them, and we have been doing that. Others would return to the site and supply the missing items, the missing equipment, the disappeared procurement items which they ought to have provided. When they do that, we have no problem with them, because ours is to protect the public interest and obtain value for money.
What about the other areas of intervention, are they free from the rot?
Another area where we met real mess was in the implementation of the TETFund scholarships, what you call the Academic Staff Training and Development (AST&D). The scholarships are part of the capacity building intervention aimed to build the capacity of scholars working in our Universities, Polytechnics, and Colleges of Education and to create an opportunity for them to pursue higher degrees for Masters and Ph.D both at home and abroad. But we realized that in quite some beneficiary institutions, the guidelines for the scholarships award were being implemented in the breach. Beyond violating the guidelines, many of the beneficiary scholars who were given money to go and pursue their studies abroad refused to go and have spent the money on something else. We further realized that in a few institutions they were not giving the scholars the total money that was approved for them. They deduct certain percentage using different sort of names like administrative charges, and all sorts of illegal deductions. There are also scholars that were given the approval to go to Europe or to go to the USA, for example, but they end up going to some African countries. Some scholars were given the authorization to do Ph.D., but they go and register for a Masters degree. But the worst of them were scholars who will collect the money and refuse to go. Now, all these were fueled by apparent disobedience to the directives of the Fund as it relates to the beneficiary institutions. The guidelines require all beneficiary institutions to pay the scholars their living costs on an annual basis and to pay their tuition to the training institutions also on annual basis. However, institutions will take the entire money and pay to the scholar, 100%. Let us say you are going to study in the United Kingdom (UK) for a Ph.D. and you are given a sum of N30 million to cover the cost of tutition and maintenance for the duration of your studies, let’s say for three years. The institution is supposed to pay you only your living cost for the first one year, and will not make any advance payment to you until you submit a progress report. This means that they will make an advance to you of the living costs for the second year after being satisfied that you are making progress with the programme. The same thing happpens for the subsequent years, up until the end of the programme. Also, they are supposed to pay the tuition fees for the first year, and when you submit progress report they pay the fees for the second year and subsequent years, etc. But what obtained in the past was that these institutions will take the entire money and pay into the account of the scholar. Instead of complying with our guidelines, they do their own thing. They pay the money to the scholars directly and the scholars will collect the money and refuse to go. Imagine a situation in which someone has never seen a N2 million or even N1 million at once in his account, and in one fell swoop you deposit N30million in his account. Then he will start thinking what would he do?
What is TETFund doing about this category of scholars or the beneficiary institutions involved in this violation of TETFund’s guidelines on staff training and development?
We have identified all of them. What we did was to conduct what we call Scholarship Audit. We realized that in quite some beneficiary institutions scholars that were given the opportunity have traveled, they have registered, they were studying. However, there were a few of them, though a significant few, in the sense that even one non-compliance is enough problem in itself. These significant few have one sort of breach, or some kind of infringement or the other. We realized that there were violations committed by the beneficiary institutions, and those committed by the nominated and sponsored scholars themselves. Once we identify a violation or a breach of the terms of the guidelines by the beneficiary institution, we will not give you any money again for subsequent years until we have seen sufficient evidence that you are recovering the funds that you have paid to these defaulting staff or scholars. Right now, we are making progress with recoveries of funds from quite some scholars who have collected the money but refused to go. Recoveries are being made from scholars that were given approvals to go for one programme and they ended up going for another. Also, recoveries are being made from scholars that have been given money to go to one country, and they ended up going to another country.
Prevention is better than cure we all agree. What is TETFund under your watch doing to forestall such breaches and prevent the type of recent outcry over alleged stranded scholars as we go forward as well?
We have systematized the process in such a way that it is going to be almost impossible for anyone to commit any fraud. For example, we insist that as one of the necessary conditions for disbursement of scholarship fund, we must see an evidence that the beneficiary institution has opened a domiciliary account, since the scholarship money is supposed to be kept in a domiciliary account to protect the value. Also, we are now paying tuition fees directly to the training institutions on an annual basis. So the beneficiary institutions will only be receiving the living cost which they will remit to the scholars on a yearly basis. We have also taken the firm view that not all countries have the quality University System to train our scholars. Consequently, we have determined which countries our scholars should be sent to pursue higher degrees. We have also determined the universities where our scholars, should and would be trained in those countries. If you would recall, I have said it quite a number of times that one of the direct instructions given to me by Mr. President is, to go and collaborate with the National Universities Commission (NUC) to raise the global ranking of Nigerian Universities. Obviously, there is no way we are going to improve the ranking of Nigerian universities, without one key component, which is the quality of our scholars. If you are sending your lecturers to go to mushroom universities abroad, those at the bottom of the league, there is no way someone trained in bottom of the league universities will come and lift your university to the top of the league university. Indeed, there is no way someone who trained in the bottom of the league university where the culture of learning is even much weaker than the culture of learning in our institutions at home will come back and raise the culture of learning and research in our tertiary education institutions. So we insist that no country on this planet will be investing the kind of money that we are investing in training lecturers that will not be interested in where these lecturers are going to study. What will they be studying or researching? Which was why we take serious interest in where we are sending our scholars to study because they are coming back to go into the classrooms, to lecture students, to supervise research, to partake in research. So we would have to get them to go to the best of places where they would interact with the best of scholars, where there are excellent facilities, so that they would come back and aspire to make our higher education system just like where they have been trained. So indeed within reason, we have also addressed the culture of corruption and the mismanagement that was going on as far as the scholarships award was concerned.
What about the issue of conferences, what have you done to curtail it from being a mere jamboree from TETFund to scholars?
The same also goes for conference attendance. We spent billions of Naira supporting and promoting scholars to attend international conferences, local conferences at home and abroad. We, however, realized that a number of these conferences were just talk-shows or jamborees. We were giving money to scholars to go just on a picnic, for the simple reason that many third party conferences, predatory conferences, scam conferences sprang up all because of abuse of TETFund guidelines on conference attendance in the past. People who know next to nothing about academics will simply set up a consortium and go about organizing conferences abroad, targeting TETFund sponsored scholars. Every scholar knows what an academic conference is, and who organises academic conferences. And we insist that we would only spend public funds as far as conference attendance intervention is concerned on genuine academic conferences so that we have value for money.
This leads us to some of the policies that were introduced by you recently; can you tell shed more light on some of these policies and how they are helping in reshaping things at TETFund?
I am very happy to say that we have recorded tremendous success. But this fundamentally, is because we are enjoying maximum support from the President, we are equally enjoying maximum cooperation from the Minister of Education, and I must say that we are enjoying maximum support from our Board of Trustees. When we studied the Operational Guidelines and we understood that there were quite a lot of loopholes that the beneficiary institutions and beneficiary scholars and our staff were taking advantage of, we felt that there was need to do a review and revise the guidelines in line with sound practices. We have done that and I am delighted to report that it is yielding desirable results. In the area of physical infrastructure, for example, we realized that we will allocate hundreds of millions of naira, sometimes billions of naira to beneficiary institutions and they go and do whatever they like. We have introduced what we call Project Proposal Defence. When we issue allocation to a beneficiary institution, the first thing that they would have to do is to come and defend their proposal, what they intend to use the allocation for before a panel of TETFund managers, and explain to us what they plan to do. We do this to ensure that the allocation that we are giving to the beneficiary institutions complies with the enabling legislation that defines the mandate of TETFund. We have four clear mandate areas, and they are: one, supporting the provision of essential infrastructure for teaching and learning; two, supporting the provision of instructional materials and equipment; three, supporting research and publications, and the fourth one is academic staff training and development. We would want to see that whatever you are doing is in the pursuit of the mandate of TETFund.
Aside the scholarship scheme and conference attendance what other non-physical intervention area do you focus on?
We did the same thing with the Library Development Fund, which is established to support the stocking of our libraries with books, journals and other periodicals both hard and electronic copies. But we realized that time, and again, the expenditure on library development is supplier-driven instead of demand-driven. We, therefore, insist that all beneficiary institutions must develop what Librarians know as Collection Development Policy. This is a document that guides the entire library operations. It includes procurements of library holdings and maintenance of the library holdings. Many beneficiary institutions didn’t have such document, and we insisted that as a condition of drawing down from the Fund, there must be a Collection Development Policy document for all the libraries in our beneficiary institutions. That policy will ensure that holdings that are procured by our institutions are demand-driven rather than supplier-driven, with all the attendant abuse and distortions. In line with non-physical interventions like the academic staff training and development (AST&D), I have spoken of what we have done about it to ensure that we are sending our scholars to the right countries, to the right universities so that they get the right quality of training. We have also conducted what we call the Access Clinic. This was meant to help our beneficiary institutions to be able to know what was the outstanding amount of money allocated to them; what they are yet to access from TETFund, and for us at TETFund to find out from them what were the impediments, the challenges that were stopping them from accessing their allocations fully.
Can you say the Buhari led administration has indeed achieved anything with TETFund, especially with the quality of academic staff?
It is gratifying to report that within the last two years alone, we have sponsored almost half of the total scholars that have been sponsored since the establishment of the scholarship 10 years ago. We started the TETFund scholarship in 2008, that is 10 years ago and in these 10 years we have sponsored about 22,000 scholars to pursue Masters and Ph.D programmes in various fields, both at home and abroad. Of those 22,000, close to 9,000 scholars or about 41% were sponsored in the last two years, under the present administration. With all sense of modesty, I can say that this is unprecedented in the history of higher education in Nigeria. Our projection is that in the next five years, we will sponsor about 45,000 scholars for higher degrees!
We are yet to hear much about the High Impact Allocation which allows selected Beneficiary Institutions to carry out Special High Impact Projects called SHIP, has that been suspended?
No, it was never suspended. In fact, it is noteworthy that for the Special High Impact Allocation, we have given six Polytechnics, six Colleges of Education and 12 Universities the Special High Impact Allocation. We are spending about N36 billion on that aside the over N132billion already spent on Special High Impact Project before now, making that over N168billion. And these projects have all sprung up across the beneficiary institutions landscape, and we are happy to say that we have thousands of projects all over our 202 beneficiary institutions that are ongoing at the moment. Quite a number of them have been completed, a number of them I have commissioned already, and a number are on the queue waiting to be commissioned. We are pleased with the progress we have made in this aspect of our intervention activity.
Without really taking you back or risking a repetition of what you have said, can you put figures to the achievements in conference attendance and scholarship sponsorship in more precise terms?
Regarding conference attendance, for example, we have sponsored more than 40,000 academic staff for local and international conferences. As far as conference attendance is concerned, we sponsor both teaching and non-teaching staff to go and attend academic conferences at home and abroad. For the scholarships we are very much pleased with the changes that we have brought to the implementation of the TETFund scholarships award. I have already mentioned that in only two years of the President Buhari administration, we have sponsored close to 9,000 scholars (the exact figure as at March 2018 is 8,820 scholars) to pursue higher degrees at home and abroad. Of course the numbers are on the increase and we believe they will continue to be on the increase. These 8,820 scholars are out of a total of 22,000 scholars that TETFund had sponsored since the commencement of the intervention in 2008. We feel that this is a huge success because we think that training the teachers in our institutions is the surest way of ensuring quality higher education in our country. As far as the implementation of the Library Intervention is concerned, we have millions of books now procured. We have supported beneficiary institutions to procure millions of volumes of holdings both in electronic and hard copy holdings over the last two years.
But there is information, credible one suggesting that there are allocated funds yet to be accessed by beneficiary institutions and these funds are with TETFund. Are there funds like that?
Yes, there are issues of accessing TETFund money because of the model we are operating. We are operating the PID Model of operation, that is: Performance Index Disbursement Model of operation. You have to perform before we give you subsequent money. We have given you money, you have to spend that money, retire that money, and we ensure that you have retired that money before we give you another one. So if you didn’t retire the money, you cannot come for another one, and that is why we did what we called the Access Clinic. At the Access Clinic we resolved most of these issues, and the rate of access has been very encouraging.
What do you find most exciting working with this government and what is the most challenging?
Yes, the most interesting thing working with this government is that nobody from the top would ask you to do the wrong thing. Nobody would ask you to do what is against the established rules. Anybody that is ahead of you or your peer that is wanting something to be done in your agency will always put that caveat; if your law permits, if your regulations would allow it. So nobody would want to ask you to do anything outside the provisions of the law. This is very encouraging, and very interesting. Whatever you do well, you will always get a tap of commendation on the back, saying well done!
Perhaps one of the challenging thing about working in this administration is maybe never in the history of Nigeria did we have a government that has so many saboteurs! Whatever you are doing there are so many landmines. Whatever you are doing you have to walk through landmines and ensure that you side-step so that you don’t march on a mine.
