TETFund Grants Tertiary Institutions Power To Sanction , Terminate Erring Contractors

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), has said it has recommended termination of contracts and sanctions for erring contractors handling projects in tertiary institutions benefiting from its interventions.

Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, made this known in Abuja at the weekend at the 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Procurement Professionals Association of Nigeria (PPAN), which also featured election into its executive positions.

Exchono, who acknowledged that there were challenges of high cost of materials in the last one year, said the agency had been coping with the situation, as it had designed ways of responding to it.

The TETFund boss said the agency was working with regulatory authorities to get support towards ensuring that there were no abandoned projects in its beneficiary institutions.

He said: “We will be working closely with the regulatory authorities to see how we can get support for this and ensure that we don’t have abandoned projects because ultimately, it is better to solve the problem today; the more you delay, the more the cost will increase and the greater the complications will be.

“So, we are working in a very nimble manner, we are working with the contractors, institutions. We are already meeting. The whole of last week we met with many institutions that have such challenges and we will continue for the rest of this week. We are finding solution.”

Speaking about tackling corruption in procurement, he described corruption as one of the manifestations or incentives for mis-procurement, adding that a good procurement is the one that delivers on the objective, especially of the procurement at the right time and at the right cost to the satisfaction of all.