From Francis Akinnodi, Ondo
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The management of Adeyemi College of Education (ACE), Ondo has praised Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), for transforming tertiary education through its intervention.
Its outgoing Provost, Prof. Olukoya Ogen, made this known when the institution conferred the Fellowship award on the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Dr. Abdullahi Bichi Baffa in Ondo.
He commended the agency’s Executive Secretary, over his commitment in checking the process abuse and ensuring judicious utilization of intervention funds among beneficiary institutions.
According to him, Dr. Baffa, since his appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari, has been working hard to reposition the agency.
He commended TETFund for its works in capital projects, academic staff training development, Library development, among others which he said has enhanced human capacity development.
The Provost explained that “Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo has benefitted greatly from TETFund. It is no more news that without TETFund, tertiary educational institutions would have been something else. Today a visit to our colleges would tell you that TETFund is maintaining and developing our colleges especially Adeyemi College of Education; and that is why we are conferring on him the highest award in the college for his support”.
“Also, his visit coincided with the commissioning of some projects; these projects are product of our existence and electronic procurement which has generated fairness, value for money, objective and transparency. The agency is one of the best institution in terms of efficiency in Nigeria.
“We have successfully in last four years extended Adeyemi College in terms of infrastructure than the old campus and a greater part of these infrastructural developments and training of our lecturers; currently we have up to 150 PhDs. This could be attributed to the efforts of the Fund intervention and we know our college will experience more development as the days go by,” he said.
Responding, Dr. Baffa described the interventions of TETFund as the life wire that had sustained the activities of beneficiary institutions.
He however assured that TETFund is ever ready to assist institutions in order to improve and provide conducive learning environment.
“Learning can never be achieved without proper facilities and proper training. And that is the essence why TETFund is putting a lot of money on training development and projects.
“We have invested a lot on infrastructure and human capacity development. TETFund is very ready to assist the beneficiary institutions,” he said.
Dr. Baffa restated the federal government’s commitment to develop teachers education through colleges of education in Nigeria by proper funding.
According to him, “Every money we put in all the 56 public Colleges of Education in Nigeria is going into supporting the training of teachers education through the provision of essential infrastructure for teaching and leaning, provision of instruction materials and equipments and training of teachers like here in Ondo.
“We have trained more than a hundred and fifty lecturers to study PhD and Masters degrees from different universities both home and aboard but one critical intervention TETFund has introduced to professionalised teacher training is the Teaching Practice Supervision Support.
“This support is aimed at supporting all public colleges of education to do the supervision of trainee teachers. The Fund is involve in teaching practice in primary and secondary schools and it is inclusive if they are not supervised twice or thrice by the lecturers. This supervision required funding and the funding is not there, so that is why we introduced the support programme.
“We believe it will professionalise the training of teachers, conduct of teachers and it will go a long way in ensuring that the interest of teaching is fully in the minds of trainee teachers”.
Some of the newly built projects commissioned are School of Languages building which will house the Dean and staff, Abdullahi Bichi Baffa Medical Centre (named after the TETFund boss) and 500 seaters lecture theater while a building abandoned since 1985 was also completed and commissioned.
