By Emmanuella Oghenetega
The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny S.T. Echono, has expressed the willingness of the agency to forge an alliance with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), to ensure the career progression of the Corps personnels.
The Executive Secretary, disclosed this when a delegation of Officers from the NSCDC, led by it’s Commandant General, Prof. Ahmed Abubakar Audi, paid him a courtesy visit at the Agency’s Headquarters in Abuja yesterday.
Speaking, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, stated that the agency will collaborate with the NSCDC in terms of research. He said, “Because of your training institutions, we will take a look at that to see what way they can also go beyond trainng your personnels for career progression, to also training particularly within the our ecosystem of the academia.
And then, we can now build such partnerships and collaboration. The good news is that even the Board of trustees recognizes this imperative, And we will try to make provisions within our disbursement guidelines for some areas of security.
“We’re doing this with all the other security agencies also in mind, so having realized the central role you play, and your mandate, we will include it among those we will be dealing with in that regard.”
He appreciated the President for his appointment of a member of the education family, “A professor of repute to spearhead this strategic national agency.”
“As it is customary, whenever we have one of our own anywhere, we lend support to ensure that they achieve your mandate. Because we are also guaranteed that they reciprocate this in ensuring that the education sector in Nigeria is repositioned to be able to be globally competitive.” He said
He congratulated the Commandant General and his team for the work done by the Corps. “It is a sign of appreciation of your efforts that Mr President is giving you additional responsibilities. And we have no doubt that you will be able to carry them out successfully.” He said.
He stated that the issue of security, is one that is important to Tetfund and the entire education sector. “And again, we want to seize this opportunity to thank you for your service.”
“We did collaborate during my last tour of duty in education sector, I recall the inter-ministerial committee, I think you were even the secretary of the committee at the time.
“I thank you for the wonderful work we did, to try and find ways of securing our schools. The Safe Schools initiative, as he mentioned, was a key element where we also tried to rally support, mobilize support. But the thing with security is that, a lot of what is done, is done behind closed doors, behind the cameras.
“So, when nothing happens, nobody knows that anything is happening. It is only when something goes wrong that people become aware. But there is a whole lot of work that goes behind and a whole lot of preventive measure that are taken, that is why we don’t get to hear about so many things happening. He said
The Executive Secretary assured, that in regards to the three areas of support and collaboration highlighted by the Commandant General, “first is the part of campus security. In the last couple of years, tetfund has taken a number of initiatives, and we have been collaborating with sister agencies of yours in various way, to try and see how we can improve security onnour campus.
“We have even only recently, about a month ago, we had a stakeholders engagement involving all heads of security and leaders of our various institutions, to try and see how we can even fashion out a security master plan for our various campuses, but we recognize in the process, that the big elephant, the people who have the direct mandate for that were not in the room. Which was part of the reasons why behind the scene engagements and today’s event is taking place. So, we want to assure the Nigerian people and all our tertiary institutions, that what they are seeing today, is the beginning concerted efforts.
“That we would collaborate with the Nigerian security and civil defence Corp to try and take measures to guarantee the safety of the young men, young women, the lecturers, and those who are trying to provide education for our children throughout all our tertiary educational institutions in the country.
“We’re going to be walking towards an MoU, where the Nigerian security and civil defence Corps will help us train personnels in our institutions who are in charge of security, in knowing what to do, how to upgrade, how to prevent the channels of communication in the event of any bridge, and so on and so forth.
“I will be leveraging on their nationwide deployment those who support our institutions. As he said, one of the steps that is happening, is that our schools, are actually setting up special security outfits and are getting licenses from them. Beyond the licenses, we also need them to train them, collaborate with them so that they can support them in the event of any crisis.
“One other area that he mentioned was the issue of research, and we are glad that indeed this is the service that has a lot of intellectual access, we have so many Phd’s led by professors and so on. And the area of security research, Information gathering, intelligence gathering, sharing, and all of that.
“We have a national research fund granting committee, it is a granting that monitoring committee. We have programs in 14 thematic areas. It was only last year or two years ago, that we added security as a separate, thematic area, ad we encourage research in various areas, aspects of security.
He thereafter, encouraged members of the service, and research Department, to take advantage of the opportunity. He said, “so we can also collaborate along finding solutions to some of the intractable security challenges we have.
Speaking earlier, the Commandant General, of the NSCDC stated that the essence of the visit was for a familiarisation tour, to meet officially and “See how we can work together.”
He said, “This is the first time the corp is visiting TETFund, and we know that the Executive Secretary within a short period has done remarkably well.”
Reeling off some of the roles played by the Corps and its achievements, he said, “We partake in the joint operations of the military Nation-wide. Also giving support to tertiary institutions in the country. The civil defence Corps would like to leverage on what you do. We also do training and license security guards. Some universities have come to us to attain license. So we have come here to see how we can partner with TETFund to see how we can work together.
