ASUU opposes plans to include private varsities as TETFUND beneficiaries

Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has spoken out against the Tertiary Education Trust Fund’s (TETFund) decision to include private universities as recipients of its projects.

TETFund and all unions of beneficiary institutions held a two-day interactive session during which Prof. Osodeke made this statement, on Wednesday.

According to Osodeke, such a move will encourage the growth of low-quality private universities.

However, he asked the fund to improve the way it tracked the progress of its projects across the nation, highlighting the fact that some of the recipient institutions’ performance levels did not match up with one another despite receiving the same amount of funding.

Read Also: ASUU warns of imminent increase in dropouts as varsities increase tuition fees

Additionally, he urged the TETFund to impose penalties on institutions that are not operating well and promoted the elimination of the so-called “stakeholders fund.”

He said: “ASUU will continue to embark on strike until the right thing is done in our tertiary institutions. Stakeholders fund should be abolished.”

Earlier, the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arch. Sonny Echono, disclosed that the interactive session was conceived as a proactive engagement against the backdrop of the prevailing challenges in the subsector.

Echono noted that the engagement was also for the purpose of sustaining steady growth and development of tertiary education.

“It is our fervent hope that this interactive session will provide an enabling environment for us to understand some of our challenges and difficulties in the delivery of quality education in our institutions and thereby make meaningful contribution to the successful execution of the objective of the Fund,” he said.

TETFund, established in 2011, disburses, manages, and monitors education tax for government-owned tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The scheme provides supplementary support to all levels of public tertiary institutions.

The main financial inflow available to TETFund is the two percent education tax paid from the assessable profit of companies registered in Nigeria.

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