By Chioma Iruke
Up to 85 percent of public varsities in Nigeria lacks hostel facilities, Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, has said.
Imam made this disclosure on Wednesday, in Gombe State University, at a hearing on the utilisation of staff intervention programme.
He revealed that TETFUND would build over 160,000 hostels to curb the shortfall in four years, adding that aside from sponsorship of scholars, the board has identified three areas including power generation, provision of Information and Communications Technology, and hostel accommodation.
According to Imam, this was based on revelations made by the National Universities Commission.
He said, “I was privileged to attend a briefing in the office of the honourable Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, in the cause of which the National Secretary of the Universities Commission announced that hostel accommodation is just barely 15 per cent across our institutions. Meaning 85 per cent of all Nigerian students are not accommodated.
“We have taken up this as a challenge, we are rolling out a programme that will provide in four years the provision of 160,000 bed spaces across 100 institutions.
“Second area of focus is in the provision of ICT. TETFUND will deploy the necessary infrastructure that will facilitate e-learning across the various institutions. The next area of focus is the issue of power, TETFUND will partner with another federal agency known as Rural Electrification Agency.”
