Wednesday, December 18, 2024 - The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has expressed displeasure over the scrapping of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), saying such a move would be inimical to the growth of tertiary education in the country.
ASUU, in a statement on Tuesday by its national chairman, Professor
Emmanuel Osodeke, said the federal government plans to replace TETFUND with the
Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) through the Tax Reform Bills proposed by
President Bola Tinubu, which are currently before the National Assembly.
The ASUU president said the government plans to gradually divert
TETFUND’s resources to NELFUND, which is equal to killing a parent in order to
keep a newborn child alive.
The academic union, therefore appealed to the National Assembly,
especially the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and the Speaker of the House
of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, to use their constitutional powers to
protect TETFund from imminent death through the Tax Bill 2024.
According to ASUU, it is a wrong move to take away TETFUND resources and
use the same to bankroll NELFUND.
ASUU argued that “Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024
specifically states that only 50% of the Development Levy would be made
available to TETFund in 2025 and 2026 while NITDA, NASENI, and NELFUND would
share the remaining percentages.
“TETFund will also receive ‘66.7% in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment’
but ‘0% in 2030 year of assessment and thereafter.”
“The far-reaching consequence of the new tax system is that from 2030,
all funds generated from the Development Levy will be passed to NELFUND.
“We find this development as a union not only worrisome but also
inimical to our national development objective because of the potential danger
to the survival of TETFund.
“The union further observed that viewing TETFund as the backbone for
infrastructural development, postgraduate training and research capacity
building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions in the last 25 years, taking
any percentage out of the Education Tax (Development Levy) to service another
agency not known to the Act establishing TETFund in 2011 is illegal and should
not be allowed to stand.
“Giving zero allocation of Development Levy to TETFund as from 2030 is a
technical way of killing the agency as the purported admonishment that TETFund
should seek innovative ways of generating its funds is spurious and
ill-advised.
“So, replacing TETFund with NELFUND is tantamount to killing a parent to
keep a newborn child alive which is unethical and against the principle of
natural justice.”
ASUU said scrapping TEFUND is tantamount to rolling back the progress and
development achieved over several years in the country’s public tertiary
institutions.
“So, Nigeria should be improving on the operations and sustainability of
TETFUND and not killing the agency,” ASUU concluded.
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