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Stop Exploiting Our Members, ASUU Urges FG

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Abuja—The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has prayed the National Assembly to do all within its capacity to protect the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, from being abrogated under the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024. The union said it was deeply concerned about TETFund because the agency remained a positive testament to its constructive engagements with Nigerian governments since 1992. It insisted that it was its considered view that abrogating the TETFund Act 2011, by design or default, would be a great disservice not just to education but also to Nigeria as a nation. The association’s position was contained in a presentation by its president, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, on the second day of the public hearing organised by the National Assembly on Tax Reform Bills in Abuja, yesterday. In the presentation, titled “Debates on the Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024: Our Case for Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund,“ ASUU said it was worried over the proposed abrogation of education tax which, it claimed posed serious threats to the survival of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund. The presentation read: “The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has monitored with keen interest the debates about review of the tax system in the country, as proposed by the Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024, which is currently before the National Assembly. “Of particular interest to our union is the proposed abrogation of education tax which poses serious threats to the survival of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund,TETFund. “From any objective assessment, TETFund has been the backbone for infrastructural development, postgraduate training and research capacity building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions in the last one-and-half decades. “Over 90 per cent of capital projects in state and federal colleges of education, polytechnics and universities during this period were TETFund-sponsored. “The intervention agency has also remained the primary source of higher degree training for young academics and support staff since 2011 when the Act establishing the Education Tax Fund, ETF, was re-oriented to its original intendment of an intervention agency for the development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. “ASUU is seriously worried that the education tax, called development levy, used to bankroll TETFund’s programmes, is about to be ceded to the newly established Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND. “Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024 states that only 50% of the development levy would be made available to TETFund in 2025 and 2026, while NITDA, NISENI, and NELFUND would share the remaining percentages. ‘’TETFund will also receive 66.7% in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment but zero per cent in 2030 year of assessment and, thereafter, from 2030, all funds generated from the development levy will be passed to NELFUND! “With all sense of responsibility, ASUU finds this development not only worrisome but also inimical to our national development objective.” ASUU said its position was predicated on a number of reasons, which include the following: “Taking any percentage out of education tax (development levy) to service another agency not known to the TETFund Act 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 abrogating the agency; the purported admonishment that TETFund should seek innovative ways of generating its funds is spurious and ill-advised because as a creation of an Act, the institution dies without the fund. “Replacing TETFund with NELFUND is comparable to killing a parent to keep a newborn child alive; it is unethical and against the principle of natural justice. “The impact of TETFund on the campus of every tertiary institution in Nigeria is beyond description; abrogating it will take public tertiary education many years back and undermine the modest gains in repositioning Nigerian universities for global reckoning and transformative development. “Annual supports given to tertiary institutions by TETFund have substantially reduced industrial crises in many tertiary institutions; renovation of old facilities and provision of new ones and opportunities for staff development, leading to career advancement, have doused labour-related agitations on our campuses. “TETFund impacts not only tertiary-level education, but also the secondary, down to kindergarten; it directly and/or indirectly supports the production of quality teachers and different categories of support staff in the entire educational system. “The Ghana Education Trust Fund, GETFund, borrowed from the Nigerian experience, while some other African countries have recently visited to understudy TETFund. Nigeria should be improving on the operations and sustainability of the agency, not planning to emasculate or abrogate it.”

The Academic Staff Union of Universities has called on the Federal Government to stop the alleged victimisation of its members across public universities in the country.

The union calls on governments at all levels, especially the Federal Government, to fulfill all its agreements with the union to enable public universities to breathe.

Speaking on Saturday while addressing newsmen at the Nigerian Union of Journalists Press Centre in Sokoto, the zonal chairman of the union, Prof Abubakar Yabo, said the memorandum of action signed between the union and the Federal Government led to the suspension of their 2022 strike, which was part of 2009 Nimi Briggs agreement, has not been addressed.

“Some of the agreements include the release of withheld three and a half months salaries due to the 2022 strike action, the release of unpaid salaries for staff on sabbatical, part-time and adjuncts appointment affected by the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

“Others include the release of outstanding third party deductions such as check-off dues and cooperative contributions, funding for revitalization of public universities captured in the 2023 Federal Government Budget, among others,” he said.

ASUU said rather than addressing what was mutually agreed upon, the government, through some visitors of some state universities in conjunction with some vice-chancellors of some federal universities and their Governing Councils, have resulted in victimisation and outright emotional assault of its members.

“The union notes with disdain that while government and respective university administrators are supposed to uphold the truth and protect the sanctity of public university system, they now serve as agents of destruction of the same system they are meant to protect and promote,” the statement added.

The union further disclosed “that the current economic hardships occasioned by the unpopular policies of governments at all levels have made teaching and learning environment so unconducive and unbearable and as such, the government has a duty to protect and respect academic freedom.”

The statement said the union is amazed at the attitude of “some overzealous university Vice Chancellors in the zone who have become intoxicated with power and, thus, resort to the unwholesome antics of tyranny and victimisation of innocent members of our union.

“The zone hereby calls on the concerned universities to thread the path of civility and global best assigned by treating university academics with the decorum they deserve.”

It, however, called on the federal government to stop its anti-intellectual posture and treat public universities with dignity and respect by fulfilling what it agreed with the union.

“The survival of this nation is umbilical tied to the survival of public universities. Therefore, let them breathe, Mr President,” he added.

The ASUU Sokoto zone comprises Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, Umaru Musa Yaradua University, Kastina, Katsina State University of Science and Technology, Sokoto State University and Federal University, Dustin-ma.

Others include Federal University Birnin Kebbi, Federal University Gusau, Shehu Shagari University of Education Sokoto and Federal University Zuru.

Credit: Punch

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