TETFund Denies Allegation Of Missing N200bn
Following media report that the sum of N200 billion went missing from its intervention account, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) on Tuesday denied the allegation stating that the sum was not remitted but used for other purposes.
Executive Secretary of the Fund, Mr. Suleiman Bogoro, who made the clarifications while answering questions from newsmen after a meeting with the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, said that the money was used to fund the federal government-Academic Staff Union Universities (ASUU) agreement of 2013.
He said: “It was when TETFund management and board needed to utilise the fund that we discovered that it had been used for other purposes.
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“Communication was then established from October 2013 in respect of the need for the money to be sent to TETFund. Let me say that up to that point, the monies meant for TETFund were actually warehoused which is the tradition in the education pool account of federal government in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“The TETFund intervention account has no access to it. The money never came to intervention account of TETFund so TETFund could not have been accounting for it.
“In fact, in the circumstance of what happened, TETFund, contrary to what is out there in the media, we are actually the victim and bereaved in the circumstance,” he said.
According to him, when it was established that the money was not remitted to TETFund account, former President Goodluck Jonathan ordered the money to be refunded.
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He also noted Jonathan’s order was subsequently taken to President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he said subsequently approved that the money be remitted to TETFund through the 2016 Appropriation.
He appealed to the National Assembly to support the President to ensure that the money was refunded to the education institution to enable it utilise it for the purpose it was intended.
