The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) Sonny Echono, has said that more than 137 students who were sponsored abroad by the body have absconded, refusing to return to the country after completing their studies.
He described the phenomenon as a major crisis calling the students unpatriotic.
Echono said this while speaking to the House of Representatives Ad-hoc committee investigating the allegations of mismanagement of N2.3tn tertiary education tax by the fund.
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“Some of the scholars that have been sponsored, unpatriotically when they go, they enjoy our scholarship, acquire a higher degree, then refuse to come back, it has become a major crisis.
“The scholarship requires that you will come back. It is required that you have a guarantor and in many cases, the guarantor has suffered undue hardship because when you disappear, we hold the guarantor to pay all the money expended on your behalf but that has not been effective.
He stated that the fund is working with the necessary stakeholders to devise effective consequences for those who refuse to return, or to enforce repayment.
“We believe that in a system where we work with our embassies and the institutions, we can enforce the repayment for those who insist they will not come back,” he said.
He stated that those who insist on remaining there without repaying the scholarship funds will be declared fugitives.
“We will write to the embassies and they will make it available to those countries and they will not be able to get jobs. They will be seen as fugitives of law from their countries.
“We may have to take that hard stand because the numbers are alarming. We just checked about 40 institutions and over 137 absconders and the review is ongoing.
“It is a huge number that we cannot afford and so we will be seeking your support to strengthen some of the existing regulations to ensure that those who benefit from this programme must come back.
“We are not against people looking for greener pastures but do so on your own, not through our scholarship or our sponsorship,” he said.
Echono stated that given these factors as well as the high exchange rate, the fund is considering suspending the foreign scholarships.
“We operate a system where our forex is being sold on our behalf at an official rate and we apply like anybody else to get it, sometimes it leads to additional cost.
“Currently as I speak, we are in consultations with all our stakeholders to suspend foreign training for a year or two.
“This is because of the recent exchange rate adjustments. We are unable to continue based on our disbursement guidelines.
“The money we allocated in naira cannot cover the dollar requirement for training. For those who are currently there, we now need more naira to pay for the dollar that is required for their annual fees. We are trying to put a hold,” he explained.
He stated that their training will now be done at experienced first-generation universities within the country.
Echono denied the allegations of N2.3tn in mismanaged funds, stating rather that the Federal Government is owing TETFUND N371.3 billion, out of which it has repaid N46 billion so far.