The governor of Katsina State, Dikko Radda, has appealed to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) for assistance in addressing the security issues plaguing the state’s universities.
On Monday, while leading a group on a working visit to TETFund in Abuja, the governor made the call.
Radda bemoaned the rising number of kidnapped students and pleaded with the federal government for immediate help as she detailed the many problems confronting the state’s universities.
In terms of economic hardship, the depreciation of the naira, rising food prices, and the effect of the removal of subsidies, the states and the country are struggling.
A sense of insecurity is affecting the northern regions. Since the state’s problems will be insurmountable with the funds we receive, we can turn to TETFund for assistance.
We need a lot of security in the institutions to make kids learn in a conducive environment since we are having a threat of insecurity and a lot of students have been kidnapped, (he said).
The state is currently transforming its information and communication technology (ICT) institution into a university of technology, which the governor said will ensure the safety of the students.
In response to the governor’s plea, Sonny Echono, the executive secretary of TETFund, stated that education was just one of several sectors hit hard by insecurity and committed to create the infrastructure needed to combat the problem.
According to Echono, the fund has already identified and prioritized all problem areas and put plans in motion to fix them.
President Bola Tinubu is adamant that education must continue even in the face of adversity, thus we had already made Katsina a key priority in our security intervention.
We have taken a plethora of actions to address each problem area in priority order. All of our institutions will have power, and we will install communication devices and other necessary infrastructure.
He said that they were all a component of the new security system.
According to Echono, recipient institutions across the nation have received a sum of N1.1 billion to N1.9 billion from the fund’s intervention line, which has begun for the year.
To get the schools to participate in the fund’s initiatives, he suggested that the state’s commissioner of education get in touch with it.