The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono has revealed that about 137 students sponsored abroad for studies by the fund have absconded. He made this revelation on Tuesday when he appeared before the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the alleged mismanagement of N2.3tn tertiary education tax by TETFund.
Echono said, “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 home. 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.”
According to him, the fund is working with relevant stakeholders to put in place “stringent and effective measures” against those who refuse to return to the country for Nigerians to benefit from their knowledge.
He said, “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.”
“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 these programmes 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.”
According to him, TETFund may decide to suspend foreign scholarship because of the foreign exchange crisis affecting the fund’s scholarship programme and he also denied any mismanagement of N2.3tn by the fund.
