Tertiary Education Trustfund (TETFund) says misappropriation of research grants is typical of lecturers in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

According to Premium Times, TETFund’s Director of Research and Development, Salihu Bakari, made this remark While speaking in Dubai.

He expressed sadness over the diversion of those funds considering lecturers are people expected to be above board.

The Premium Times quoted Salihu Bakari as saying, “It is sad to note that public funds made available to lecturers to conduct groundbreaking and demand-driven researches towards solving Nigeria’s socio-economic, and even political challenges, are misappropriated by those who are expected to be above board. I mean the beneficiaries of our grants.

According to Bakari, they made efforts to recover those funds only to discover that the lectures built houses, bought cars, with the funds. He went on to imply that all that amount to corruption.

“Through our recovery efforts, we had traced monies to houses built by lecturers with the public fund; there are cases of cars purchased with the money, without any research work done. And these are the people who would be accusing politicians of being corrupt,” Bakari said.

Furthermore, he declared that since TETFund has commenced the shifting of focus from infrastructural development of higher institutions to content development, nobody is coming for the funds again

He said, “Today, we have decided to shift our focus and we have opened more doors of opportunities for both the lecturers and their institutions to attract funds to showcase their expertise. But what do we see? No one is coming for the funds.

According to the Premium Times, he went on to state that they are working with the EFCC in order to reduce the level of corruption in the education sector.