By Chinyere Nwachukwu
Lagos – Dr Abdullahi Baffa, the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), has expressed worries over what he called low quality of research output coming from Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
He made the assertion while delivering a lead paper at a one-day National Conference on Quality Education, Access and Rights Management in Nigeria, on Monday in Lagos.
Baffa identified such low-quality research output as a serious hindrance to national development.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the conference was organised by the Reproduction Rights Society of Nigeria in collaboration with the Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities.
The theme of the conference is “Access to Published Works and Rights Management for Sustainable Tertiary Publishing and Global Competitiveness’’.
He said there was the need to reverse the trend, especially the institution-based research being funded by TETFund.
According to Baffa, the National Research Fund, a special intervention introduced in 2011 to encourage research for national development, is yet to be fully explored by the institutions.
He said that the development must be reversed.
“A seed grant of N3 billion was set aside by the Fund for the programme, out of which N1.72 billion has been spent on 44 types of research.
“It is important to note that an additional N1 billion has been allocated to TETFund recently,’’ he said.
The TETFund boss said the national research fund screening and monitoring committee was set up in 2011 to screen and recommend fundable proposals.
He said that the committee was reconstituted and inaugurated in July, while the new 15-member body was set to resume screening of research proposals.
“No fewer than 77 research are currently being funded while up to 1,847 new proposals are being processed for possible funding.’’
He also said that to create access, TETFund had provided funding for the systematic upgrading of academic programmes for a conducive teaching and learning environment in selected tertiary institutions.
According to him, 38 universities received N102 billion while 14 polytechnics and colleges of education received N14.6 billion and N14.3 billion respectively.
This, according to him, is in addition to the N1.5 billion received by the Nigerian Defence Academy.
He said the TETFund Institution Based Research Intervention had been brought back to life since the culture of research and publications “is part of the core mandates of higher educational institutions’’.
Baffa also said that 2,200 projects have been funded from the inception of the Fund, adding that it had also enabled lecturers to develop and produce their academic manuscripts into textbooks.
All these, he said, are made possible through funds made available to the institutions on an annual basis.
He noted that for any work to be funded by TETFund, the manuscripts must be accepted to be published by an academic press.
The scribe added that all research studies funded by TETFund must be published in what he described as “Quartile 1 or Quartile 2 Journals”.
Baffa said that this would guarantee the quality of research works, enhance citation index of the scholars and improve the citation index of Nigeria. (NAN)