The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has cautioned against 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 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.