Image: TETFund (CREDIT: Google)
Foreign scholarship lecturers from TETFund have disappeared.
The number of Nigerian university instructors who have fled after studying overseas under the support of TETFund is frightening, according to Sonny Echono, the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund.
According to Echono, TETFund would seek repayment from the missing professors or have them repatriated if they refused to return the funds.
On Monday, while in Makurdi for the TETFund Management Retreat, he made a speech.
Soft and severe procedures were devised by TETFund, he claimed, to discipline the university instructors who absconded.
The worrying amount is something I don’t want to share; it’s tragic that this chance is being misused, he added.
People who have returned home but have not finished the bare minimum of their bond before choosing to move, a phenomenon known as “japa syndrome,” contribute to the overall huge size of the figure.
Due to the fact that the institutions are the ones submitting the reports, we are always improving our database.
Even though it’s hard to receive reliable information, sometimes it’s not that someone ran away but that they went over their allotted time in class.
“However, some have programme extensions; we have a solid plan, but the numbers don’t bode well. What’s more, I can reveal that security agencies are taking notice and are investigating this as well.”
“What we are doing, first as a soft landing, is requiring anybody who has benefited in our programme and does not come back to make the full refund of the money expended in training them,” he said, addressing the penalty.
Alternatively, and this is the more challenging choice, we are working with our embassies, the embassies of the countries in which they are located, and relevant institutions.
As you may remember, I recently met with foreign institutions that will sponsor our candidate.
As a condition of further patronage, I demanded that our scholars who went abroad but did not return provide the necessary paperwork to their respective internal affairs departments.
This is because these scholars are either still on valid visas or are not allowed to seek employment in their home countries.
Their abuse of their visa makes them vulnerable to migration, which is our next course of action; we have faith that they will do the right thing and go with the first choice.
Additionally, he announced that tertiary institutions in the country had received over N400 billion from TETFund.