N500b unclaimed funds abandoned in TETFUND — House of Reps Committee

The House of Representatives Committee on TETFUND and other Services has disclosed that more than five hundred billion naira allocated to various benefitting institutions have remained unclaimed with the Fund.

This disclosure was made by the Chairman of the Committee, Miriam Odinakachukwu Onuoha when she led lawmakers on a courtesy call to the Abia State Governor, Alex Otti in Umuahia.

Onuoha explained that the House has created a separate Standing Committee on TETFUND to ensure better accountability and for judicious utilization of the amounts released.

She said the House has relaxed some of the stringent conditions causing the delay, providing an opportunity for the committee to speak with benefitting institutions.

“The committee paid a courtesy call and oversight visit to TETFUND on 30/5/2024 and discovered that the funds yet to be utilized were over 500 billion that had been allocated to beneficiary Tertiary institutions and we probed further and found out that there were divergent reasons for this stalemate and accumulation of funds.

Onuoha said they were consulting with the affected states and institutions to find out the reasons for the accumulation.

She noted that Abia is one of the states with accumulated unclaimed TETFUND resources for tertiary education but promised that her committee will work with the Abia State government and Tertiary institutions to ensure that the State gets the right slice of the TETFUND intervention.

Responding to the Committee, Governor Alex Otti said his administration would do everything possible to reclaim funds belonging to Abia State which have not been assessed, saying that the money is needed to fix the ruins in the state’s education sector.

Otti said his quest to bring education to an acceptable standard in the state made his administration allocate 20% of the 2024 Abia budget to education alone.