Tertiary Education Trust Fund and the Development of Selected Federal Universities in South-South Nigeria, 1999-2020

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2022 in the subject Politics - Region: Africa, grade: 4.3 CGP, , course: Public Administration, language: English, abstract: The development and sustainability of any nation is anchored on the efforts and measures put in place by the government towards the funding and development of its tertiary education system, which is that level of education where skills, competence and advanced knowledge are gained and utilized. The defect in this very important sector resulted in numerous challenges that grossly affected the economic development of the nation. The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) came in as a quick fix to reinvigorate and revamp the Nigeria tertiary education system. This study examined the Tertiary Education Trust Fund and the development of the six selected Federal Universities in South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria (1999-2020). To carry out this study successfully, data was gathered through primary and secondary sources, the descriptive survey design was adopted and questionnaire were distributed; four research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study. A sample of 1744 respondents were used for the study, which comprised 55 respondents for TETFund officials and 1689 for the university staff (teaching and non-teaching), the stratified random sampling was used for the TETFund officials and the Taro Yamene sample size determination formula for the University Staff in the six selected Federal Universities, The System and New Public Management theory were adopted as the theoretical framework. The questionnaires were structured on a 4-point likert scale and valid data analysed with the use of descriptive statistical tools of tables, charts, mean and standard deviation. The Z-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 Alpha levels. The findings of the study indicated that TETFund has impacted positively in arresting the rot in Nigeria University Education in infrastructures as well as human capacity development, except for the little challenges that have to do with ease of access and government regulations associated with the policy, the study recommends among others that: all TETFund interventions should be utilized for the purpose it was established and not for personal aggrandizement and the bottlenecks encountered by the beneficiaries in the process of accessing the funds should be curtailed.