By our Reporter
The Federal Government has reaffirmed its commitment to transforming the tertiary education landscape through the deployment of digital platforms to enhance teaching, learning, research, innovation and institutional efficiency.
Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, made the commitment while directing the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to onboard private tertiary institutions onto the Tertiary Education Research and Application Service (TERAS) platform.
He said the directive aligns with ongoing efforts to strengthen and safeguard the education ecosystem through strategic public-private collaboration.
TERAS, a digital platform developed by TETFund, was designed to address critical challenges faced by students, researchers and institutions in accessing educational resources and research materials. As of April 2024, over 2.4 million students across public tertiary institutions had enrolled on the platform and were benefiting from its services.
The platform was unveiled in October 2023 by the former Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, and features tools such as the Beneficiary Identity Management Service (BIMS), Aggregated Research Journals (EBSCO), EagleScan plagiarism detection, and the Blackboard Learning Management System, among others.
TERAS serves as a centralised hub where tertiary institutions, students and researchers can access world-class educational resources, monitor research for plagiarism and carry out other academic activities.
Alausa underscored the importance of onboarding private tertiary institutions, noting that sustainable progress in education requires collective responsibility and inclusive partnerships between government and private-sector stakeholders.
He explained that the expansion of TERAS, implemented in collaboration with TETFund, marks a milestone in Nigeria’s digital education reform agenda.
While TERAS has traditionally served public universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, eligible private institutions are now invited to formally partner with TETFund and benefit from the same premium digital services delivered at national scale.
The minister said TERAS provides a unified national digital infrastructure that offers structured onboarding, reliable connectivity, cost efficiency, standardised quality-assurance mechanisms and data-driven decision-making tools.
“These features are critical to improving institutional performance and ensuring that Nigerian tertiary institutions remain competitive both locally and globally,” he said.
According to him, the inclusion of private institutions reflects the Federal Government’s broader vision of a unified, inclusive and resilient higher education ecosystem aligned with global best practices.
He called on interested private universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to formally express interest through the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities and engage with TETFund.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, disclosed that the Fund has introduced a new intervention line in its 2026 annual direct intervention, the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN).
He said the initiative aims to improve access to global academic resources and integrate TERAS into NgREN beginning from the 2026 intervention cycle.
Echono noted that the Fund is expanding special intervention projects to include centres for robotics, coding and AI/machine learning, as well as centres for cybersecurity studies in selected beneficiary institutions.
He added that 12 additional institutions would benefit from the commercial farm project, comprising two universities, eight polytechnics and two colleges of education.
