The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Sonny Echono, says the federal government is owing the organisation N323 billion.
Mr Echono said the federal government borrowed N371.3 billion from the agency but has only refunded N48 billion so far.
He stated this on Tuesday when he appeared before an ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives investigating the alleged missing N2.3 trillion in TETFUND.
The House had last Tuesday set up the Committee, headed by Oluwole Oke (PDP, Osun), to investigate the alleged abuse of N2.3 trillion generated from the Tertiary Education Tax by the Fund from 2011 to 2023.
In his remarks, Mr Echono denied the allegation of mismanaging the funds, noting that the federal government is owing the fund.
“The federal government acknowledges that it was borrowing, and we have full documentation of this and all the correspondences that accompanied it. Other borrowings since then are being tabulated and given to you.
We did secure presidential approval to refund this borrowing since 2015, and the federal government has been refunding, albeit piecemeal.
“To date, total borrowing is over N371 billion. But the total repayment to this date is about N48 billion. Last year N12.8 billion was given to us; this year, another 12.89 billion was given to us. They are just paying. God knows how long this will take to defray the principal amount,” he said.
He explained that the federal government generated N2.476 trillion from education tax from 2011 to 2022, and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) retained N99 billion as the cost of collection.
Mr Echono said: “From the year 2011 to 2022, total education tax collected by the FIRS as presented to us in their documentations, as confirmed from the statements we received from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which we have also attached for the Committee to peruse is N2,476,733,181,679.75.
“Out of this amount, a total sum of N99 billion was retained by FIRS as cost of collection, leaving a balance of N2.37 trillion. So the total fund that had hit the education pool account at the CBN is N2.3 trillion from 2011 to date.”
FX regime affecting TETFUND scholarship
The ES also explained that the Fund is struggling with the foreign exchange regime because the recent devaluation of the naira affected the approved funds for students on scholarships abroad.
He said the organisation is considering suspending foreign scholarships and focusing on first-generation universities in Nigeria for training.
“The money we allocated in naira cannot cover the dollar requirement for training. For those who are currently there, we now need more naira to pay for the dollar that is required for their annual fees. We are trying to put a hold.
“Most of our training now will be done locally through our experienced, first-generation universities and other specialised universities based here. This way, we can retain our resources in-house and cope with the change of foreign exchange variation,” he stated.
Mr Oke, while reacting to the comments by Mr Echono, said the committee is not out to witch-hunt anyone but rather to get to the root of the matter.
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