TETFund cracks down on abandoned projects

….Bars defaulting institutions from 2027 funding

By Joseph Erunke, Abuja

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund,TETFund, has wielded the big stick against beneficiary tertiary institutions that have failed to complete intervention projects.

It also announced that institutions with lingering abandoned or delayed projects would be shut out of new project approvals under the 2027 intervention cycle.

The tough stance was adopted by the Board of Trustees, BoT, of the Fund as part of sweeping measures aimed at ending years of project delays, cost overruns and poor implementation that have undermined the impact of TETFund interventions across Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

The Fund’s Director, Public Affairs, Abdulmumin Oniyangi, who disclosed this in a statement yesterday, quoted Chairman of the Board, Aminu Bello Masari, as saying “the era of allowing institutions to pile up fresh projects while existing ones remain uncompleted was over.”

Masari, who noted that the Board would no longer tolerate what it described as avoidable delays, 

acknowledged that some of the stalled projects were initially affected by soaring prices of construction materials, including cement, reinforcement bars, sanitary and electrical fittings. 

He recalled that the Board had introduced a special intervention line in 2023 to address such projects.

According to him, the initiative recorded significant success, with many previously abandoned projects completed after additional funding was provided.

Despite that intervention, he lamented that delays had continued in several institutions, blaming the trend largely on lack of continuity by successive heads of institutions who abandoned inherited projects in favour of new ones, as well as bureaucratic bottlenecks that slow payments to contractors.

He warned that internal politics and administrative red tape within beneficiary institutions would no longer be allowed to frustrate projects financed with public funds.

To permanently address the challenge, the Board approved a raft of immediate measures.

Under the new directives, every beneficiary institution must compile a comprehensive inventory of all projects that have remained uncompleted for more than six months beyond their scheduled completion dates, clearly stating the reasons for the delays and proposing practical solutions.

The institutions are also required to rank the projects according to priority and relevance, while providing detailed cost estimates needed for their completion.

In addition, each institution is to establish a robust project supervision mechanism involving its physical planning and maintenance departments to ensure projects are delivered on schedule, within approved costs and according to required quality standards.

Most significantly, institutions with delayed projects will now be compelled to channel their annual, zonal and high impact intervention allocations towards completing those projects before seeking approval for any new ones.

The Board declared that no fresh projects would be admitted for any institution identified as having outstanding delayed projects during the 2027 intervention cycle.

To ensure compliance, TETFund disclosed that monitoring teams made up of Board members and the Fund’s technical officials would embark on nationwide inspections of affected projects between August and September 2026.

The inspections, the Fund said, would assess the status of the projects and evaluate completion plans submitted by beneficiary institutions ahead of the Board’s statutory meeting in October 2026, where projects to be included in the 2027 disbursement guidelines would be considered.

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