Low-enrolment institutions to lose their TETFund support

The Nigerian federal government has announced that tertiary institutions with fewer than 1,000 students enrolled will no longer receive funding from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). It said the policy, designed to optimise public resource utilisation by restructuring the funding framework, will take effect from 2026, reports Owede Agbajileke for The Guardian Nigeria.

Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Ahmad, stated this at the 2025 policy meeting in Abuja. Professor Ahmad questioned the fairness of distributing the same amount of resources to schools with low enrolment as to those with much larger student populations. The minister, therefore, urged TETFund beneficiary institutions to exceed the government’s student enrolment benchmark to continue accessing funding from the agency.

Some industry stakeholders said the policy could threaten institutions’ financial stability and academic programmes, as TETFund accounts for over 80% of interventions in most beneficiary schools.
Full report on The Guardian Nigeria site