The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has began an investigation on 27 tertiary education institutions in the North-West geo-political zone over their alleged misused of grants made available by Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
ICPC, made this known in a statement in which it said, it had recently recovered N7.5 million unused grant from 11 lecturers of the Kaduna Polytechnic.
The recovered money was part of TETFund grants released to the school between 2010 and 2017 for staff capacity development through local and international training.
[penci_blockquote style=”style-2″ align=”none” author=””] “Beneficiaries of such grant must ensure they go for the training because ICPC will not only recover such funds but will prosecute anybody found culpable,” Abubakar said.[/penci_blockquote]
The acting Chairman of the Commission, Dr. Musa Usman Abubakar, said the anti-graft body would ensure that individuals found wanting of misusing the grants are not only made to refund the money but would face prosecution.
The ICPC, through its North West Zonal office which coordinated the investigation on the utilization of TETFUND grants in the institution, found that the 11 lecturers failed to attend the trainings despite having received monies.
The trainings were scheduled to hold in Nigeria and three other countries, including the United States of America, Greece, and United Arab Emirates.
Some of the lecturers collected as much as N1.39 million while others collected between N149, 000 and N1, 337,000 under the Academic Staff Training and Development Project.
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The commission Acting Chairman who handed over the recovered funds to the Bursar of the institution, Mr. Garba Nabayi, said that ICPC would ensure tertiary institutions in the country stop the misuse of TETFund and other grants.
“Carting away of public funds is one of the things ICPC is fighting. Non-utilization of fund given to lecturers is a crime and lecturers as role models, are to show good behavioural conduct to their students.
“Beneficiaries of such grant must ensure they go for the training because ICPC will not only recover such funds but will prosecute anybody found culpable,” Abubakar said.
He noted that the Commission would also spread its investigation to institutions in other geo-political zones in the course of time.