The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has cautioned the National Assembly and the National Economic Council to resist any attempt to abrogate the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) through the passage of the new tax reform bill.
ASUU is worried that the Federal Government’s clandestine move to compel legislative passage of the controversial bill will invariably cripple the developmental gains and impact of the fund in public universities.
Addressing a press conference at Bayero University, Kano, on Wednesday, ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Kano Zone, Professor Abdulkadir Muhammad, insisted the union will not fold its arms and watch the systematic killing of its brainchild.
Tagged Nigeria Tax Bill 2024 and Its Consequences on TETFund: Killing the Brainchild of ASUU, Professor Muhammad posited that Nigerian universities may head for imminent collapse if the bill presently before the assembly is passed.
Section 56(3) of the NTB 2024 specifically states that TETFund would receive 50 per cent of the development levy from the consolidated account beginning in 2025 and 2026.
According to this section of the new tax law, the fund will receive 66.67 per cent in 2027, 2028, and 2029 years of assessment and will subsequently drop to zero allocation by 2030.
The ASUU leader, who traced the union’s struggle to seek alternative funding for universities, which led to the establishment of the Education Trust Fund in 1993 and its metamorphosis into TETFund in 2011, lamented that subtle means to abolish the fund would drag higher education backwards.
“Since its establishment, TETFund has arguably been the most successful agency in terms of providing intervention to the education sector. The achievements recorded by TETFund surpass those of annual budgetary allocations, which have been consistently low over the years and failed to address critical needs.
“The impact of TETFund on the campuses of every public tertiary institution in Nigeria is glaring. Therefore, abrogating it will take public tertiary education many years back and subvert the modest gains in repositioning Nigerian public universities for global reckoning.
“The ASUU-Kano zone has resolved not to fold its arms and watch the systematic killing of its brainchild, which has, over the years, salvaged the Nigerian university system from imminent collapse. It is our humble view that the current clandestine move to abrogate the TETFund Act 2011 is unpopular, anti-poor, unpatriotic, and certainly, it is going to be destructive to the survival of public education.
“Therefore, the zone calls on the National Assembly and the National Economic Council to use their constitutional powers to stop the enactment of this bill into law. The zone also calls on well-meaning Nigerians and other stakeholders to prevail on the federal government of Nigeria to withdraw this bill with immediate effect,” Professor Muhammad read.
(Guardian)
