News – Page 500 – Kwararafa Reporters

I Don’t Owe Any Civil Servant, Pensioners – Hope Uzodimma

Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State has said he was not indebted to any pensioner or civil servant in the state. The governor said over 40,...

News4 years ago

FG Reportedly Fails To Honour Pact With ASUU

Two weeks after suspending their nine-month-old strike, university teachers have accused the Federal Government of reneging on the agreement reached with the Academic Staff Union of...

News4 years ago

Northern Coalition Plans To Sue Buhari Over Service Chiefs’ Tenure

The Coalition of Northern Groups says it’s dragging the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to court over the continued retention of the nation’s service chiefs....

News4 years ago

Garba Shehu: PDP Is University Of Lies, Nigerians Don’t Want Them Back In 2023

The Presidency on Sunday described as disgraceful the claim by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that Nigerians are fed up with President Muhammadu Buhari and the...

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.”

News4 years ago

Don’t Use Us As Bait – ASUU Warns Other Staff Unions

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has said the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, or any other union should not use it as bait...

News4 years ago

COVID-19: Eight Months After, FG Fails To Insure Health Workers

Afeez Hanafi Medical doctors in Nigeria have decried the delay in the commencement of life insurance for frontline health workers combating the COVID-19 pandemic, saying there...

News4 years ago

Insecurity: Ijaw Youths Push For Security Outfit In Niger Delta

THE Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide has vowed to pursue the establishment of a regional security outfit in the New Year to police the Niger Delta...

News4 years ago

School Reopening: Enugu Government To Meet With Stakeholders On Monday

The Enugu State Ministry of Education said it has scheduled to meet with major stakeholders in the sector, on Monday, January 4, 2021, to discuss schools...

News4 years ago

Sen. Shekarau Inspects FG’s Zonal Intervention Projects In Kano

By Rabiu Sani-Ali Sen. Ibrahim Shekarau (APC – Kano Central), on Saturday, inspected health and education development projects being executed by the Federal Government in his...

News4 years ago

Delta Commissioner Warns Youths Against Drug Abuse

By ifeanyi Olannye Delta State Commissioner for Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu, has cautioned Nigerian youths against drug abuse, because of its psychological damage to users and...