The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) has approved N130m for each polytechnic in Nigeria as a zonal intervention fund.

This was confirmed by the Director of Infrastructure of the Fund, Buhari Mika’Ilu, at the TETFund/NBTE sensitisation workshop on the 2023 Zonal Intervention on Skills for Rectors and Directors of Skills in Beneficiary Polytechnics, which was held in Abuja on Tuesday.

Mika’Ilu said that the fund is aimed at reinvigorating skills acquisition in polytechnics across the country, adding that it would integrate the efforts of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) in increasing the capacities of polytechnics to deliver on their mandate.

“Funds are allocated in line with the provision of the Establishment Act and guided towards addressing critical and essential needs of the beneficiary institutions for the improvement of quality and maintenance of standards in the tertiary educational institutions.

”NBTE has been at the forefront in championing the need to have skills in the educational system in Nigeria. It is in response to this that the fund has prioritised the 2023 zonal allocation to polytechnics to be geared towards reinvigorating skills acquisition in the polytechnics across the country,” he said.

He said the money would be used mainly for acquiring, installing, and testing new training equipment and materials within the institutions.

”This is to further consolidate the efforts of NBTE in increasing the capacities of polytechnics to deliver on their mandate. Therefore, the sum of N130,000,000 only allocated to each polytechnic has the main focus of procurement, installation, testing, training, and commissioning of relevant training materials,” he said.

He explained what some of the previous years’ intervention funds were used for. In 2017, funds were focused on building and upgrading toilet facilities while in 2022, funds were used in the procurement of new ICT facilities for the institutions.

“In the year 2017, the Fund focused the zonal intervention on the “Student Dignity Project”. Hence, the intervention was used to upgrade and standardise all lavatory facilities or provision of new ones where necessary in academic areas of institutions, also shuttle buses (coaches) were procured for students’ use among other projects.”

“Most recently, the 2022 intervention was used for the deployment of ICT facilities within the institutions in line with the guidelines developed by the Fund. This is essential to increase the capacities of institutions to function effectively and deliver their programmes online.

”The Fund has allocated a total of N60,290,000,000.00 for zonal intervention for the year 2023 to all the two hundred and nineteen beneficiary institutions of which, the sum of N9,230,000,000.00 is allocated to polytechnics,” he said.

He added the intervention, a post-research activity, had created an opportunity for academic staff in Science and Technology Programmes to fabricate equipment, thus promoting skills development in the Polytechnics.