OON Award Will Motivate Me To Do More –
The Executive secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono, recently received the National Honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) from President Muhammadu Buhari.
Speaking with LEADERSHIP in an interview, Echono said the award will spur him on to greater service for the nation.
He said the award was also a way of rekindling hope in the populace that if you work very hard and conscientiously, somebody is watching you.
"First is to express my deep appreciation to the body of federal permanent secretaries led by the Head of Service that made the recommendation to Mr. President, for graciously approving the component of the award.
"Well, it's supposed to reflect one's contributions. Throughout my tenure as permanent secretary, I started from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and thereafter, I went to the Ministry of communications before my redeployment to the Ministry of Education in August of 2017. So the first reaction is one of gratitude and appreciation and the other is the fact that it's a motivation.
"Once your services are appreciated, it has to give you the impetus to do more and to dedicate yourself to a greater vehicle and that is my expectation, not just for me but for all the recipients," he said.
The TETFund boss also said that the Fund under his leadership is committed not only to delivering projects promptly, but also stepping up the quality of construction.
He added; "When I came on board I made the point very clear that given my projects background it's absolutely imperative that the quality of our projects will have to showcase the fact that professionals in that area are in charge, and my help retains the institution.
"I also conveyed across all our contractors, we issued deadlines, and on our own we also made promises, we held ourselves accountable for any submission that comes to us. We complete all the processes including going to visit the site and assessing and making the processing deployment within two weeks.
"We have been holding ourselves to that standard. It has always been the tradition and I've been very lucky to have very committed staff. So my staff has been wonderful when I give them the chance, and I can see the enthusiasm which features in the robust reports I receive."
He noted that TETFund is also meeting with experts for good planning and procurement while sticking with its own to see how it can work to complete all the ongoing projects.
"We are liberated up to see and that dashboard you see there I can actually monitor all our projects across our beneficiary institutions right there and then and I can talk in real time and they even upload the photographs of the picture into a project and I have that right to the heads of institutions.
"We met and we have a timetable that will take us all the way to April of next year, meeting with institutions to address issues around what we call distressed projects, that is projects that have not been moving very well or that ought to have been completed but are not yet completed or those that have contractual disputes," Echono said.