The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has approved N4.9 billion to address the paucity of indigenous tertiary textbooks and other academic publications in the nation’s higher education sector.

Executive Secretary of TETFund, Professor Elias Bogoro, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the inauguration of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Book Development Fund, said N2.5 billion has been utilised for the intended purpose.

Bogoro lamented that the insufficiency of standard literature at the tertiary level in all libraries and bookshop across the country underscores the urgent need to have targeted strategies to encourage the production of textbooks for tertiary institutions.

“It is also worrisome that the quality of most academic publications in our country leaves much to be desired,” he said.

He noted that the Book Development Fund Intervention was introduced to restore the culture of research and high-quality academic publishing in higher education sub-sector. (The Guardian)