TETFund look into Electricity challenge in varsities—Echono

Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund TETFund, Mr Sonny Echono, has said the Fund will this year intervene to ameliorate the high energy cost that is almost crippling teaching and learning in tertiary institutions in the country. The intervention, he noted, is to complement the efforts of the federal government that is planning to install solar energy panels in some of the higher institutions. Some public universities like the University of Lagos, the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University, because of being categorized as Band A users by electricity distribution companies, are each slammed with monthly power bill in excess of N300 million. Echono stated this in Lagos at the weekend where TETFund won the New Telegraph Newspaper’s award as the Most Improved Government Agency in 2024.
The TETFund boss expressed optimism that 2025 would be a bright year for the agency, as it consolidates on previous gains and move into another level of its intervention activities. “The award is dedicated to Mr President and the Minister of Education who have been pushing us to ensure judicious use of allocated resources and to also ensure that our beneficiary institutions use resources allocated to them judiciously too. 2025 we believe is going to be our brightest year of intervention as we are going to tailor our interventions to the needs of our beneficiary institutions. We are focusing on things like power. We know that most of our beneficiary institutions are facing the challenge of paying energy bills and we are going to key into the move by the federal government to provide solar power to a number of public tertiary institutions. The importance of energy to run the institutions cannot be over-emphasised.
“We will also improve the condition for teaching and learning. We will improve the conditions of hostels and we will enhance research efforts and capacities of our lecturers. We will ensure that our research centres are excellent in nature and that we won’t need to send research samples abroad again. We will continue efforts to improve the capacities of our institutions to become centres of excellence and thereby improve their global rankings and also make our students to be globally competitive,” he said. Asked whether the agency is not being overburdened by the constant establishment of higher institutions by the government, as it is mandatory for it to cater for such institutions, Echono allayed the fear of being overwhelmed. The more the merrier. We have a high rate of population growth and a high demand for higher education. In a situation where over two million candidates seek admission to tertiary institutions yearly and between 600,000 and 700,000 are admitted, we still need more higher institutions. People are paying their taxes and we have increase in our resources. Since we are judiciously using available  resources, we are on course. We welcome new challenges and we are ready to fulfill our mandate,” he assured.