Delisting colleges of agric from Tetfund unfortunate – Prof Sharubutu

“We are not benefiting from Tetfund’s intervention. This year my budget is N10 million, what am I going to do with only N10 million while my colleague in Ibadan is running his school with N15 million? The most unfortunate thing is that where you have a department of agriculture in a polytechnic, it will benefit […]

“We are not benefiting from Tetfund’s intervention. This year my budget is N10 million, what am I going to do with only N10 million while my colleague in Ibadan is running his school with N15 million? The most unfortunate thing is that where you have a department of agriculture in a polytechnic, it will benefit from Tetfund yet the colleges of agriculture do not,” Sharubutu lamented.
Speaking with our reporter in his office in Vom, Plateau State, the provost bemoaned the review of Tetfund policy to include colleges of agriculture, adding that it takes care of only the universities, polytechnics and some colleges.
 “But what is the definition of polytechnic? Polytechnics by the law establishing NBTE, are institutions that train people in vocational and technical education. Now we do that. We train ND and HND; we run vocational and technical education. We take our students through JAMB, we are accredited through the same process by the NBTE but we are deprived of the fund,” he said.
He stated that all efforts by the affected colleges to correct this abnormality have failed.
“There were no emissaries that we did not send to the authorities concerned but nobody seems to care about it. Yet agriculture is the mainstay of the economy. How can you go to a polytechnic and recommend a sub-unit of a course for Tetfund intervention and then the whole college of agriculture should not enjoy same or even more?” he said.
He added that “if today a polytechnic of agriculture is established will it benefit from the Fund? It is the problem of nomenclature because we do the same thing with polytechnics and are regulated by the same body – NBTE.”
Professor Sharubutu said that he had presented his case to many authorities including meeting the Minister of Education, adding “there is no place that I did not go about this issue, even the minister of agriculture is aware of it.”