Chidimma UCHEGBU, Abuja
Governor Dikko Radda of Katsina State has sought support from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to help tackle the challenges of insecurity affecting tertiary institutions in the state.
Radda was speaking when he led the Katsina state delegation on a working visit to TETFund in Abuja on Monday.
He said that a lot of students had been kidnapped hence the need for support to enable the state to provide adequate infrastructure for students to learn.
“We need to appreciate the Federal Government for these interventions. What could our institutions be without you?
“The states are struggling, the country is struggling in terms of economic hardship, depreciation of the naira, high cost of foodstuffs, the effect of the removal of Subsidy.
“The northern parts are struggling with insecurity. The resources we receive will not be adequate to address the challenges in the state so TETFund is a place we can come to for support.
“We are having the threat of insecurity and a lot of students have been kidnapped, so we need a lot of security in the institutions to make students learn in a conducive environment,” he said.
The governor explained that the interventions would provide for the needed infrastructure for the safety of the students adding that the state is in the process of converting its ICT institution to a university of technology.
Responding, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono explained that insecurity was a national issue affecting not only education but promised that the necessary infrastructure would be put in place to address it.
Echono said that the fund had prioritised all the trouble spots with measures in place to address the issues.
“Given the expansion in tertiary institutions in recent times, I am aware we are in the process of getting the University of Transportation into the mainstream of our interventions.
” We have seven to eight institutions in the state benefiting from TETFund. Katsina is in the eyes of problems of insecurity.
” We had already prioritise Katsina in our security intervention because President Bola Tinubu is determined that in times of crisis, education must not stop.
“The president has said that we must bring those out of school back to school, expand existing programmes and more significantly to expand access in leveraging technology and providing for indigent students.
“We have prioritise all the trouble spots with a multiplicity of measures. We are ensuring there is power in all our institutions, putting in place communication gadgets and the rest. All of these are part of the security infrastructure that is being implemented,” he said.
Echono added that skills programmes must be expanded to cover the skills gap pledging that massive plans had been on the ground to take children off the street.
He, however, said that the fund has commenced its intervention line for the year saying beneficiary institutions across the country have benefitted between N1.1 billion and N1.9 billion in its intervention line.
He, therefore, advised the state’s Commissioner of Education to liaise with the fund to enlist the institutions to benefit from its interventions.
