The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, announced that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) won't be financing any new construction projects in 2025.

Mr. Alausa mentioned that the Fund will concentrate solely on maintaining the current facilities in tertiary institutions.

During an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, he shared that this directive, issued by President Bola Tinubu, has also been relayed to TETFund Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono.

“One priority area we’re going to be doing is to fix these infrastructures. Rehabilitate, improve and get them to a very high standard,” he said on the television programme.

“Enough of building new buildings. I just had a meeting with the TETFund executive secretary yesterday to communicate in clear terms the directives given by the president to me.”

He went on to say that public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education will utilize their intervention funds, set to be distributed in 2025, for repairing and upgrading hostels, lecture halls, auditoriums, labs, classrooms, and offices.

The education minister noted that TETFund has done a commendable job in funding construction projects in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

He emphasized that the goal of the directive is to ensure that “we maximize the impact of every single Naira that TETFund allocates to our tertiary institutions.”

TETFund disbursements

TETFund is an intervention agency for Nigerian public tertiary institutions, established by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act in 2011.

It oversees, manages, disburses, and monitors the effective use of the 3 percent Tertiary Education Tax paid by all registered companies in Nigeria.

Originally known as the Education Tax Act (1993), it was designed to support all levels of public education, from basic to tertiary.

However, in 2011, the Act was repealed and replaced with the TETFund Act, which now focuses exclusively on public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.

The education tax, previously set at 2 percent, was raised to 3 percent by last year’s finance Act.

Nigerian universities have been leaning on TETFund for their capital projects over the years, especially as government funding keeps shrinking.

Now, there are worries about TETFund's future. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has recently expressed concerns that the Tax Reform Bill currently in the National Assembly could seriously undermine TETFund. 

ASUU pointed out that if the bill goes through, TETFund's funding will take a hit for the first two years and could be completely wiped out by 2030. 

The union emphasized that TETFund has played a crucial role in developing infrastructure and training academics in Nigeria. They are against the part of the tax bill that would eliminate the three percent education tax that currently goes to TETFund as per the Finance Act (2023).

Instead, the bill suggests a flat four percent development levy that would be split among TETFund, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).

ASUU, which has always been critical of NELFUND, argues that this shift towards student loans might pressure public universities to keep raising tuition fees. 

They warned that phasing out TETFund would pose a serious threat to higher education in Nigeria, as its support for infrastructure and human capital development would come to a halt. 

This change could also leave students in long-term debt, mirroring the financial struggles faced by the country itself, the union stated at a press conference in Abuja.