The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) has raised concern over the persistent low uptake of its free digital resources, with the agency's Executive Secretary revealing that Nigerian students continue to pay for academic content online while hundreds of global libraries remain accessible to them at no cost through a government funded platform.

Arc. Sonny Echono disclosed this while declaring open the Education Correspondents Association of Nigeria congress in Abuja, where he expressed frustration that the Tertiary Education Research and Application Service platform had yet to achieve widespread adoption despite offering free access to 400 libraries across the globe, anti plagiarism checkers and digitised theses spanning the last ten years.

"We established a very comprehensive platform. We call it the TERAS. Where students and lecturers can go and access educational content. You have access to 400 different libraries across the globe on that platform. You have access to anti plagiarism checkers for any work you do. And they all come free of charge," he stated.

Echono noted that students were spending money on platforms such as Google Scholar to access content that was already available to them without charge. "Some of these contents you are looking for, they tell you to pay $5 before you can access them. But this is coming free of charge," he added.

He attributed the low uptake to a combination of inadequate awareness and resistance to change, describing it as a broader challenge affecting Nigeria's educational and social development. He tasked ECAN members with bridging the information gap through sustained coverage and sensitisation.

"One of the biggest challenges we face, both in our society and in the educational sector, is the limited use of knowledge. Sometimes this is due to lack of information about it. At other times, it is the usual inertia to make change," he said.

Echono also announced that TETFund would commence project commissioning and inspection tours across the six geopolitical zones before December, with both electronic and print media representatives included in each team. He added that the tours would draw attention to facilities such as regional research laboratories and academic publishing centres operating in eight locations nationwide.

On abandoned projects in tertiary institutions, Echono clarified that many were not TETFund's, but confirmed that the agency would make specific budgetary allocations next year to fund completion of projects at 40% to 90% completion. "As long as they remain in that state, they are wasting assets," he stated.

ECAN Chairman Chuks Ukwatu announced that the association's Education Summit, scheduled for next month, would assess the first three years of the Tinubu administration across reform, progress and challenges in Nigeria's education sector. He also disclosed that Echono was among agency heads selected to receive an ECAN award for outstanding contributions to education in the country.