Federal funding for university conference lopsided across zones

A handful of schools and two of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal government’s sponsorship of local and foreign conference attendance for staff of tertiary institutions over a 12-year period, government data shows.

Nine schools received at least 700 and above 900 sponsorships while more established institutions received less than 300 between 2010 and 2022.

The north-west and north-central received the most of the six zones, according to disaggregated data from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, analyzed by Pluboard.

The Fund, better known as TETFUND, is the government agency established to intervene in the public tertiary education sector through the rehabilitation and restoration of teaching and learning infrastructure, resources and environment.

TETFund gets its funding from 2% Education Tax charged on the profit of all registered companies operating in Nigeria. The tax is assessed and collected by Federal Inland Revenue Services.

The agency disburses amounts to federal and state tertiary educational institutions and monitors projects executed with the funds.

The academic staff training and development programme has three segments: TETFund Scholarship for Academic Staff Intervention programme, Teaching Practice Intervention and Conference Attendance Intervention programme, which started in 2010.

The conference theme sponsors teaching and non-teaching staff of Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions to attend academic conferences, professional conferences and workshops, locally and internationally.

Here is what the data says about the super beneficiaries in 12 years.

Biggest beneficiaries (regions)

The highest number of sponsorships went to the north-west which garnered 17,771, followed by north-central with 14,810 and south-south with 10,243.

That is followed by south-west with 9,424 sponsorships and north-east with 9,145. The least is south-east with 7,587.

Biggest benefitting schools (foreign conference for academic staff)

We determined the biggest beneficiaries for this category by ranking those that received at least 200 sponsorships in 12 years.

The biggest recipient was University of Ilorin with 245, followed by University of Benin with 226. That was followed by Obafemi Awolowo University with 211, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with 209, and University of Uyo with 201.

Biggest benefitting schools (foreign conference for non-academic staff)

Given the relatively lower number of cases in this category, we picked schools that received 60 and above. The highest number of non-academic staff who attended foreign conferences during the period came from Ahmadu Bello University which had 107.

This was followed by Tai Solarin University of Education with 81 and Umaru Shinkafi Polytechnic with 70. Nigeria Defence Academy had 64 sponsorships. FOn the lower end, Benue State University Makurdi had 21 while Abia State University, Uturu, had six.

Biggest benefitting schools (local conference for academic and non-academic staff)

For this category, we ranked schools that had over 300 sponsorships in either academic or non-academic categories.

Twenty-eight schools reached that benchmark. Of that, north-west had 14, followed by south-south with six. The north-central had four. South-east had two while the south-west and the north-east had one each.

Biggest benefitting schools across all categories

To gauge the biggest beneficiaries across all the categories (academic and non-academic for local and foreign travels) we measured schools that received at least 700 sponsorships in 12 years. We found nine schools in all. They are listed below:

– Infractions

It is not clear why the programme recorded wide disparities across schools and the country, especially amongst long established schools. The total for the University of Lagos for instance was 245.

A spokesperson for TETFUND did not respond to calls on Thursday.

To receive sponsorships, lecturers and non-academic staff are selected more than once a year after applications are routed through and screened by their schools. The first application for 2023 is currently open.

The programme has been plagued by what TETFUND calls “infractions”, a reference to deliberate refusal by recipients to proceed for conferences.

In 2020, the agency suspended its sponsorship of conference attendance over allegations of fraud by many beneficiaries. A top official said many beneficiaries failed to attend the conferences and instead used the money to buy houses and cars.

The programme has since restarted with relatively stricter rules. Some staff complain about the process of selection which sometimes fail to clear applicants to travel in time for scheduled events.

“I truly understand the need to curb observed corrupt practices among staff of TETFund beneficiary institutions alleged to have diverted conference attendance funds for other purposes in previous administrations of the fund,” Habeebat Adeniran, senior lecturer at the Journalism Department, Lagos State University, said in January.

“I however believe the current condition can potentially discourage genuine applicants from applying for the fund due to limited feasibility​ of the current requirement.”