ASUU Kicks Against FG’s TETFund Abrogation Plan, Demands Stakeholders’ Intervention

By Praise Chinecherem

Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Owerri Zone has called on stakeholders in education sector to rise against planned abrogation of the Tertiary Education Trust TET Fund by President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

The ongoing tax reforms of the present administration at the federal level have aspects that proposed the abrogation of the Education Tax called the Development Levy, used to bankroll TETFund’s programmes.

It also proposed the ceding of the levy to the newly established Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) by 2030.

Addressing newsmen at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Zonal Coordinator, ASUU Owerri Zone, Prof Dennis Aribodor described the development as not only worrisome but inimical to Nigeria’s national development objective because of the potential danger it has to the survival of TETFund.

Aribodor expressed the zone’s concerns over Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024 which 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 “66⅔% in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment” but 0% in 2030 year of assessment and thereafter.

“This is alarming and should not be allowed particularly when priority has not been given to funding public education through budgetary allocation by successive federal and state governments.

“To substantiate this, 7% was allocated to education as against 15% in the manifesto of APC (the party in power), and over 20% recommended by UNESCO.

“Education including tertiary education is a public good and should not be commercialized especially by persons that benefited most from public education,” he said.

While viewing TETFund as the backbone for infrastructural development, postgraduate training and research capacity building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions in the last fifteen (15) years, ASUU Owerri Zone said taking any percentage out of the Education Tax to service another agency not known to the TETFund Act 2011 is illegal and should not be allowed to stand.

It warned that giving zero allocation of Development Levy to TETFund as from 2030 is a technical way of killing the agency and public tertiary education. It added that 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.

The zone further said 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, noting that the impact of TETFund on the campus of every tertiary institution in Nigeria is beyond description.

“Annual support given to tertiary institutions by TETFund has substantially reduced industrial crises in many tertiary institutions; renovation of old facilities and provision of new ones, as well as 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. So, Nigeria should be improving on the operations and sustainability of the agency, and not planning to emasculate or abrogate it,” Aribodor posited.

The ASUU Owerri Zone said it has resolved not to stand by and watch the denigration or obliteration of TETfund which represents the positive testament to its constructive engagements with Nigeria governments since 1992.

It said, “It is our considered view that abrogating the TETFund Act 2011, by design or default, will be a great disservice not just to education but to Nigeria as a nation.

“As a result, ASUU Owerri Zone is urging all stakeholders in the Nigeria Education project particularly the National Assembly, especially the Senate President and the Speaker of House of Representatives, to do all within their capacity to protect TETFund from being abrogated under the Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024 and save the killing of public tertiary education.”

Recall that the TETFund came about in 2011, when the Education Trust Fund, ETF Act was repealed, due to lapses and challenges in its operation.

These lapses and challenges include the ETF being overburdened and overstretched and able only to render palliative support to all levels of public educational institutions in Nigeria and the duplication of functions and mandates of other agencies set up after the ETF, such as Universal Basic Education (UBE).

TETFund currently provides intervention to Two Hundred and Forty-Four (244) public tertiary institutions in Nigeria which are 96 Universities, 72 Polytechnics and 76 Colleges of Education.

A further breakdown of these institutions shows that 49 Federal Universities, 47 State Universities, 34 Federal Polytechnics, 38 State Polytechnics, 28 Federal Colleges of Education and 48 State Colleges of Education are beneficiaries under the fund.