The recent courtesy visit of the Executive Director, Prof. Ogbonna Onuoha, and members of Management, to the Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trustfund, Arc. Sonny S.T. Echono, at Abuja was an overt manifestation of the unquenching hunger of an administration in dire search of extra support in complementing modest statutory funding, to subdue the mammoth undeveloped and bushy landscape of the Institute and transform it to a typical milieu of a tertiary institution.

It was a well thought out platform by the Executive Director to seek special aid from an agency that is properly positioned to help an institution that has suffered abject neglect from the authorities that set it up for inexplicable reasons; an institution that was yet to receive take-off grant since its establishment in 1993.

Prof. Onuoha seized the opportunity of the visit to present a document to the Executive Secretary, appealing for assistance in six critical areas of need. While the ED expressed profound appreciation to the ES for granting waiver to NINLAN, as an Inter-University Centre, which enabled it to access TETfund interventions in 2025, he sought the consideration of Arc. Echono to remove NINLAN from intervention lines assigned to Polytechnics and Colleges of Education and move the Institute to intervention structures meant for tertiary institutions supervised by the National Universities Commission.

The ED further used the medium to request for special and high-impact funding to enable the Institute to construct perimeter fencing across the length and breadth of its 209.5 hectare land mass to reduce security risks like land encroachment, invasion by herdsmen, trespass by hunters, and recurrent wildfires caused by bush burning.

Other prayers by the ED to the ES include assistance in renovating old and dilapidated structures; construction of internal roads; acquisition of utility vehicles; and procurement of Nigerian-language ICT tools.

In reciprocation of the visit and in response to the ED’s presentation, the Executive Secretary gave the assurance that the TETfund Board would review NINLAN’s intervention lines to ensure that it was properly placed in the next intervention cycle.

He also promised that TETFund would support the Institute to complete some abandoned and existing structures; support commercial agricultural development as a sustainable approach for securing the Institute’s vast land area, as well as assist in procuring two vehicles to enhance administrative efficiency.

The Institute, currently benefitting from the waiver granted it by TETfund in 2025, with two approvals already received and is still counting, is poised to wear a new look from 2026 and beyond with the erection of new buildings and other facilities.

And with strong consideration of autonomous degree programmes for the Institute by federal authorities, supported with concerted efforts and prayers of well-meaning stakeholders, NINLAN may soon begin to forget its chequered history.