The federal government has announced a major policy shift that will disqualify tertiary institutions with fewer than 2,000 students from accessing funding from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in a bid to enforce accountability and ensure efficient allocation of public resources.
Minister of Education Tunji Alausa made this known on Friday during a one-day engagement in Lagos with heads of tertiary institutions, bursars, and procurement directors from the Southern zone. The forum focused on the review of the 2024/2025 TETFund intervention guidelines.
“We are re-evaluating how institutions benefit from TETFund. We can no longer incentivize poor performance or underutilization,” Alausa declared.
Why the Change?
Alausa explained that it was no longer justifiable to allocate equal resources to schools with drastically different student populations. He revealed that several polytechnics established as far back as 2019 still operate with just 350 to 550 students yet receive the same level of funding as institutions with 18,000+ students.
“This is inefficient and unsustainable,” the minister stressed. “Any institution that, after five years of operation, still has fewer than 2,000 students may be deemed ineligible for TETFund support until they scale up their capacity.”
Satellite Campuses and Foreign Scholarships Also Under Review
Alausa further criticized the unchecked proliferation of satellite campuses, calling it “unsustainable and counterproductive.” He also revealed a policy shift on foreign scholarships, highlighting that 85% of beneficiaries never return to Nigeria.
“Many of the programmes they studied could have been handled effectively within our own institutions,” he said.
To address this, Alausa announced that 28 Centres of Excellence have been established in both public and private universities to boost local postgraduate education and research capacity.
TETFund Executive: Funding Now Performance-Based
In line with the new direction, TETFund Executive Secretary Sonny Echono confirmed the transition to a performance-driven and sustainable funding model.
“Institutions that consistently fail to access, utilize, or retire funds appropriately, or that fall short of enrollment and academic performance thresholds, risk being delisted,” Echono warned.
He also urged institutions to explore public-private partnerships (PPPs) to reduce overdependence on government funding, especially in the development of hostels, innovation parks, and support infrastructure.
Accountability, Not Punishment
Both Alausa and Echono emphasized that the goal of the reforms was not punitive but aimed at strengthening institutional credibility and maximizing the impact of public investments in education.
“This policy is not meant to punish but to safeguard the credibility and impact of TETFund interventions,” said Echono.
“This engagement is a call to action. It is a platform to learn, reflect, and commit to best practices in governance, project management, and compliance,” Alausa concluded.
What This Means for Institutions
Tertiary institutions operating below the 2,000-student threshold after five years face exclusion from TETFund.
Underperforming schools risk being delisted.
Institutions are encouraged to scale up enrollment, improve accountability, and adopt PPP models for infrastructure development.
Greater investment in local postgraduate training will replace the over-reliance on costly foreign scholarships.
The reforms signal a decisive effort by the Federal Government to link funding to performance in Nigeria’s tertiary education sector
