Continue funding varsities, VCs beg TETFUND

The Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities has stated that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund should continue to fund the infrastructural development of the universities to meet the needs of the huge number of students admitted to the schools.

Speak with Saturday POINT, the president of CVCNU, Prof. Edoumiekumo Samuel, said: “Let me tell you, even as of this moment, Cambridge is still building, Cambridge that was founded in 1209; they are still building because the infrastructural deficit is a function of the number of student intake.

“If the number of students admitted to universities increases, you also have to increase manpower and infrastructure. For now you have 15 or 20 students in a class. Today you are talking about hundreds. So the issue of infrastructure development is an ongoing thing.”

Recall that TETFUND Executive Secretary Sonny Echono said in January that the trust fund had delivered 162 projects in 28 states of the federation and in 54 beneficiary institutions.

He stressed that the trust fund spread its projects across the country’s six geopolitical zones.

When asked if students would be given a break from academic activities to go home, collect their permanent voter cards and vote in the upcoming polls, he said only individual university senates and boards could decide to close the gates and allow students to collect their votes. PVCs in the upcoming elections.

It was previously reported that on February 1, 2023, Labor Party presidential candidate Peter Obi urged the Independent National Electoral Commission to ensure that students collect their PVCs.

Speaking on the matter, the CVCNU chairman stressed that neither the National Assembly nor the CVCNU had the authority to inform the tertiary institutions to close the universities across the country.

He said: “This is not the first time an election has taken place; they are not the ones informing universities. The universities have their respective boards of directors and their senates; so individual universities will review the scenarios within their universities and make appropriate decisions.

Speaking to Nigeria Delta University, Bayelsa, he said: “We already have our schedule, we are starting exams, and we have also considered elections and made provisions for that period.

“So we are not even going to continue until after the elections. We already take care of that. In the same vein, I know that respective VCs and their senates must have considered all those things.