Some 17,000 academic staff from various tertiary institutions in the country have been trained in Information and Communication Technology, ICT, in the last two years, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, has said.

Arc. Sonny Echono, Executive Secretary of TETFund, made this known at Asset Declaration, Security and Fraud Detection Awareness Workshop /TETFund SERVICOM Week, in Abuja.

Echono, who expressed delight at the level of impact TETFund has brought to bear in public higher education institutions in the country, said the Fund has also trained 37,000 academic staff and sponsored 98,000 others to attend workshops and conferences.

He said:”Since the signing of the TETFund Act of 2011 into law by Mr President the impact of the Fund has been felt by all our stakeholders as is evident through the magnitude of projects and programs for both Infrastructure and human capacity development of all academic staff of the public tertiary Institutions.

“Is something we are very proud of. If you go to our campuses across the country in our beneficiary tertiary institutions, the TETFund logo has become so synonymous with many of the physical structures that we have. If you notice, even when unions are agitating they never mention TETFund as part of their problem because we have been able to train 37,000 of them .

” 98,000 academic and non academic staff of our tertiary institutions have been sponsored to attend conferences and workshops all over the globe in addition to the 37, 000 that have acquired masters and PhDs through the intervention of TETFund.”

The TETFund boss, who was conferred Officer of the Order of the Niger,OON,by President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, congratulated the immediate past Chairman of TETFund’s Board of Trustees, Kashim Ibrahim-Imam and former Executive Secretary, Professor Suleiman Bogoro for bagging OFR and OON respectively, saying the awards were well deserved.

“May I use this opportunity to congratulate the immediate past chairman of our Board and the immediate past executive Secretary for yesterday’s national award, it was a great day for TETFund with 3 nominees or awardees,” Echono said.

On the recent move by TETFund to leverage more on ICT to ensure seamless delivery of its mandate, Echono said the Fund would soon ensure major processes in some areas of interventions are strictly done through online.

“Nearly 17, 000 academic staff, this is outside the figure I gave earlier, in the last two years have been trained on ICT, so that they can deliver and carry out their functions well.

“This year we have approved that all the interventions that have to do with ICT will have be done online, we don’t want them to send papers to us, we don’t even what face to face contact,” Echono said, adding that such step will likely be extended to the library and academic training intervention lines.

Speaking further, Echono called on TETFund staff to ensure what was learnt at the workshop was put into use appropriately especially in the area of service delivery, adding that the Agency staff that have distinguished themselves in service delivery will be honoured by end of the year.

On his part, the National Coordinator of Servicom, Mrs Nnena Akajemeli, commended Echono, TETFund’s Head of Servicom Unit Ebere Nwobu, among others, for ensuring successful celebration of the Customers Service Week.

While saying this year’s Customer Service Week has its theme as ‘Celebrate Service’, Akajemeli expressed satisfaction with the open communication between TETFund and its stakeholders, saying it is the right step in the right direction.

In a remark, the Head, TETFund’s SERVICOM Unit, Mrs Ebere Nwobu, who said the Agency would continue to give the desired attention to all its stakeholders, commended Echono for always providing the necessary support to ensure better service delivery

“In a special way, I would like to thank my Boss, our ever-listening Executive Secretary, as I always call him “The Service Provider in Chief”, for giving us the necessary support and encouragement to organize this 2022 Customer Service Week.

” The ES is always willing and available to listen to complaints and suggestions from the SERVICOM Unit. We cannot thank you enough sir,” she said.