The UK government has pledged its readiness to deepen relationships with the Nigerian government on transnational education.

The UK Government International Education Champion, Prof. Steve Smith said this in Abuja on Monday when a delegation of British universities paid a courtesy call on the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono.

Smith said that 60 per cent of applications to the UK were from other countries, noting that internalisation had become a trend that must be embraced.

While supporting the Centres of Excellence initiated by the fund across the country, Smith said this was the way to drive collaborations.

He, therefore, called for strict regulations to depend the relationships between the two countries.

“My role as an international education champion is to promote deeper relationships between the education and research systems of the UK and five countries -Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Vietnam, Indonesia and India.

“My job is to work to deepen relationships between the UK and this counties and in that context, this is third visit I made to Nigeria in two years.

“We have brought this delegation because the UK and NUC has series of guidelines on transnational education and we have finalised, to be launched at the end of November.

“We are not just to have students come to the UK for studies but we are much interested in building capacity and UK university is forming partnerships with institutions here in Nigeria,” he said.

Responding, the Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono said that the current trend as directed by President Bola Tinubu was to foster collaborations and partnerships across the globe.

Echono said that the fund is looking at improving and upgrading facilities in the institutions to be able to attract international students into the Nigerian educational institutions.

According to him, doing this will foster the relevance of Nigerian institutions to national aspirations and it is going to be a win-win solution.

He also said that the collaboration was necessary to ensure that Nigerians sponsored on scholarships returns to put their experiences and knowledge to the development of the country.

” Some of our scholars go abroad and don’t return. This collaboration is to ensure that the scholars we sponsor return to put their knowledge for national development.

“So with this collaborations, the question of not coming home will not arise,” he said.

He further said that the fund had planned to support some Centres of Excellence in its interventions so that the centres could be best put to use.

Echono added that the fund had also been ranking the Nigerian institutions to know the multidisciplinary research they undertook as well as the degree of internalisation.

He said the country was doing this to look out for solutions that best fit for international collaboration.

“TETFUND currently support 253 tertiary institutions and it is supposed to go to 260 by the end of the year.

“With the relationships between the two countries, we look forward to this being a flagship relationship to deepen research, promote exchanges and fast tracking our efforts at internalisation.

“We want to attract international students to promote exchange of students, promote multidisciplinary research to deepen relevance of institutions to national development.

“We want to assure that priority will be given to UK universities, we are here to support in terms of funding and political supports.

” We will be working closely with the NUC and also will be extending this to polytechnics to promote skills development,” he added