Evaluation of Tertiary Education Trust Fund Intervention and Administration acrossUniversities 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.