The Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TET Fund, has revealed that over 137 students sponsored on scholarship abroad absconded.
The Executive Secretary, TETFund, Sonny Echono revealed this 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 however assured that TETFund is working with stakeholders for “stringent and effective measures” to be taken against those who refuse to return to the country.
“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.”
“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,” 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,” he said.
TETFund boss added such scholars who refuse to return to Nigeria after enjoying the sponsorship from the country would be declared fugitives, henceforth, except they repay the money expended on academic programmes.
Echono said, “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 this programme 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.”
The Executive Secretary said TETFund may suspend foreign scholarship due to the exchange rate crisis.
