By Ngozi Nwankwo
Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND, has clarified that the launch of the student’s loan scheme has only been postponed for a couple of weeks and not indefinitely.
Echono said this while receiving the governor of Kwara state, Gov AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq in his office, Abuja, yesterday.
He explained that the delay in the launch was only to make sure that there were no complications in the proper implementation of the scheme, as they want to ensure that the scheme is up to standard
“The loan has not been postponed indefinitely, there’s just a little house keeping that needs to be done, the president has arrangements in place for the launch.
“We are discussing a matter of days, maximum weeks for it to take off. The president is very committed to this, and I can assure you that this is going to be done in the best way.
“We don’t want to hurriedly launch the programme, and there are objections, and it isn’t sustained”
“We’re making sure that the loan can accommodate as many that need it. Even people with skills, it’s going to be a game changer. We’re working hand in hand with Jamb we know when admissions will commence, so we are not far behind”
“In the next couple of weeks, the scheme will take off, and it will accommodate everyone, even students of vocational studies,” he said.
Speaking earlier, the Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, who paid a working visit to Echono appealed to the management of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, for support in the upgrade of the three Colleges of Education in the state to Universities of Education.
AbdulRazaq listed the three colleges of education for conversion into Universities to include: Kwara State College of Education, Oro; Kwara State College of Education (Technical), Lafiagi; and Kwara State College of Education, Ilorin.
He revealed that most of the colleges of education which are state-owned were faced with management challenges including infrastructure, poor investment, and lopsidedness where the non-teaching staff are far more than the academic staff of the institutions.
The Kwara State governor commended TETFund for its massive interventions in both Federal State public tertiary institutions across the country. He said when one visits any universities in the states; it was as if the institutions are TETFund Universities because they are full of the Fund’s projects.
He said he was not at the TETFund to complain about marginalization but to thank the Executive Secretary and his management team for impactful interventions in Kwara state and indeed in the entire public tertiary institutions in the country.
He said it was on record that Kwara has one of the best University Libraries in the whole of the West Africa courtesy of TETFund’s intervention.
“Mainly, this visit is to say you are doing a good job and on behalf of the people and government of Kwara state we say thank you for the job you have done and we appreciate you.
“But we need more support. By and large we intend to convert all our colleges of education to Universities of education and so we need your assistant to do that. It is easy to do that because the structures are there,” he said.
