TETFund to ease varsities’ high electricity costs

By Gabriel Dike

The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Mr Sonny Echono, says the fund will this year intervene to ameliorate the high electricity bills paid by tertiary institutions in the country.

According to him, the intervention will complement the efforts of the federal government’s move to install solar energy panels in some of the tertiary institutions.

Several public institutions, such as the University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, and Ahmadu Bello University, placed on Band A by the electricity distribution companies, pay monthly bills in excess of N300 million, with billions as outstanding debt.

Echono disclosed this at the weekend in Lagos, where TETFund won the New Telegraph Newspaper’s award as the Most Improved Government Agency in 2024.

He expressed optimism that 2025 would be a bright year for the agency, with plans to consolidate on previous gains and move to another level of its intervention programmes.

His words: “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.”

Echono stressed that TETFund would continue to improve the capacities of tertiary institutions to become centres of excellence, thus improving their global rankings and also making students globally competitive.

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, the TETFund boss allayed fears 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 an increase in our resources. Since we are judiciously using available resources, we are on course. We welcome new challenges and we are ready to fulfil our mandate,” Echono stated.