Sonny Echono, executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), has said that the fund expended N320 billion on interventions in tertiary institutions across the country in 2023.

Mr Echono disclosed this while speaking to journalists after the TETFund management retreat in Makurdi on Monday.

Mr Echono, who said the retreat was to assess their performance in 2023, said that over N400 billion had been disbursed to tertiary institutions over the years.

He said the figure being spent on interventions kept increasing every year because more institutions were being enlisted in the TETFund intervention programme.

Mr Echono said the intervention programmes range from infrastructural development of tertiary institutions to sponsoring lecturers on master’s and PhD programmes overseas.

He expressed concern at the alarming number of Nigerian university lecturers who absconded after studying abroad under TETFund sponsorship.

The TETFund boss said that the board would make the absconded lecturers refund money expended on them or be repatriated.

He said the organisation had put in place measures to ensure that the university lecturers who absconded were sanctioned.

“I don’t want to give figures because it’s alarming; it’s very sad that this opportunity that has been given is being abused.

“The figure is comprehensive, which is why it’s a bit large because there are others who have come back home but did not complete the minimum of their bond before deciding to relocate, or Japa as it’s called nowadays.

“We have a database now, which we are refining each time because the institutions are the ones submitting the report.

“Although it is a difficult thing to get accurate reports for some, it’s not that they absconded, but they exceeded their course period.

“But some have extensions in their programme, but we have a very good idea, and the number is not encouraging.

“What we are doing, first as a soft landing, we are requiring anybody who has benefitted from our programme and does not come back to make the full refund of the money expended on training them.

“The other option, which is the harder one, is that we are collaborating with our embassies, the embassies of the country where they are and the institutions to repatriate them”, he said.

(NAN)