By ABUBAKAR YUSUF.
The Tertiary Institution Trust Fund, TETFUND, was established to mitigate both academic and infrastructure development of tertiary education in Nigeria, along with funding for research and other basic needs in Nigeria.
The new helmsman under the leadership of Arc Sunday Echono took over from his successor, Professor Bogoro after his term of office expired in January this year.
Arc Echono, a highly revered prince of domain land was a trained technocrat and bureaucrat who was at one time or the other, a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Education before he retired from office.
A reformer to the core, his ascension to the TETFUND leadership was another chapter of not only advancing and promoting the policy thrust of the agency but laced with transparency and accountability.
With indepth experience both in the civil service and administrative positions, along with his exposure, Arc Echono’s flare for high-level decisions and delivery of good leadership wisdom cannot be contradicted.
Hence, a few months into the leadership of TETFUND, a lot of initiatives, reforms, and repositioning of its activities are already in the offing to the detriment of naysayers and those who believed in business as usual, against the laydown procedures now scampering for their continued existence to no avail.
Without delay, just four months down the line, he had embarked on wholistic and uninterrupted reforms that are already paying off, to reduce reckless and extravagant spending as well as bogus programs that had no positive impact or multiplier effects on the running of both the organization and tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
In line with his new road map to redirect the agency from the old order, particularly in the area of public procurement, research and development as well as other critical programs of the agency in Nigeria’s tertiary education, concerted and drastic decisions had been taken to avoid not only leakages but continuous wastage of government funds.
The review of public procurement in line with the best practices far away from the prevailing situations before he assumed duty, had begun the process of reinvigorating the hitherto all-comers agency where anything goes, but is being resisted by the current leadership under Arc Sunday Echono.
The general norms and practices of contract /Job splitting, Job padding, and multiple jobs for one single contractor (s), had been nipped in the bud and gone for good, as sharp practices of any sort are no longer the other of the day.
Job execution and delivery by proxy is no longer the thriving system and conducts in TETFUND on the assumption of duty by the new leadership, as due process in the execution of jobs had been restored to bring sanity into the system.
An ongoing reorientation of the workforce of the agency through seminars, workshops, talk shops, training, and symposia to acquaint the workers with the new modus operandi is on the stream, to discourage the continuous deployment of any unethical practices not in concert with the new development in the agency.
With growing resistance to doing the right thing by the new management and a subtle attempt to run down the leadership, all hands must be on deck to support the new leadership whose intention is to do the needful and the right thing for the sustenance of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
Yusuf Writes From Abuja, All inquiries to yus.abubakar3@gmail.com.
