Evaluation of Tertiary Education Trust Fund Intervention and Administration across Universities in South-South Nigeria (2011–2018)

Abstract

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund has contributed hugely to the improvement of education in Nigeria. This critical interventionist agency of government stands tall with an unbroken record of funding public tertiary education in Nigeria. This paper presents a holistic trend of the agency’s intervention activities cascaded along three intervention lines (essential physical infrastructure, research and publication, and academic staff training and development) across universities in the south-south geopolitical zone of Nigeria (2011–2018). Two research questions were answered using harmonized data collected from secondary sources. The collected data were analyzed with the use of descriptive statistics, the results of the analysis showed that total allocated funds by agency cascaded along the six universities stood at ₦31,657.600.000 with average of ₦3,957.200.000. The result further revealed that the University of Calabar got the highest total allocated funds of ₦4,826,560.000, followed by the University of Port-Harcourt with ₦4,749,560.000. Niger Delta University, University of Benin, University of Uyo, and Delta State University got a uniform total allocation of ₦5,520.380.000 each. In light of the data, it was indicated, amid other things, that with the avalanche of monetary allocation having cascaded across essential physical infrastructure, successive interventions should give priority attention to research and publication as well as academic staff training and development intervention lines. The study concluded that averages of total allocated funds by TETFund across selected intervention lines showed essential physical infrastructure with the highest allocation of ₦430,050.000, followed by academic staff training and development ₦199,790.000, research and publication being the least with ₦32,810.000.