The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) are collaborating to ensure transparency and compliance with education tax remittances.
This came to light recently when the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono paid a courtesy visit to his counterpart at NEITI, Dr Ogbonnaya Orji at the NEITI office in Abuja in a move aimed at strengthening partnership between both agencies on accessibility to credible data, tax compliance and revenue disclosures.
Speaking during the visit, Arc. Sonny Echono noted that TETFund’s main source of funding was the collection from Education Tax which has a greater percentage coming from the oil and gas sector and that informed the need to strengthen the partnership with NEITI, to help the Fund access data that would provide real time information on revenue from the oil and gas sector.
He maintained that the collaboration would enhance the Fund’s capacity to keep track of such data which consequently would result in TETFund’s ability to expand support for development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Arc. Echono reiterated that the Fund places credence in NEITI’s data credibility and such information is vital to TETFund’s funding drive.
In his response, the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji welcomed the proposed collaboration, expressing the need to ensure transparent utilization of TETFund income from the extractive sector for development of tertiary education and national development.
He assured that NEITI would support TETFund in ensuring Education Tax compliance in the extractive sector, leveraging on its expertise in financial auditing and revenue tracking.
