ASUU, TETFund, CVC, NUC Reject Amendments to TETFund Act


Abuja — The clamour to amend clause 72a and 73 of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Act 2011 and expand its scope of intervention has again suffered a major setback as stakeholders vehemently rejected any change to the law.

The stakeholders are Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Committee of Vice Chancellors (CVC), TETFund and the National Universities Commission (NUC).

Two separate bills proposing the amendments had passed first and second reading in the House of Representatives and came up for public hearing on Monday where stakeholders tersely spurned the amendments as an attempt to weaken the impact of TETFund.

The bills seek to expand TETFund interventions to private universities by about 10 per cent of all the two per cent company taxes collected; and to federal tertiary health institutions and teaching hospitals by 17.5 per cent of the taxes.

Speaking at a public hearing held in the House Committee on Tertiary Education Services, the National President of the ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, said private universities are private enterprises which should be contributing to TETFund and not drawing from it.



Ogunyemi argued that allowing private universities to benefit from TETFund would violate the essence of establishing the fund which is to get private sector to contribute to funding of education through education tax.

"How can we be deploying public funds to support private investment? They are charging fees and making profit and they are coming back to say they want to draw from public funds?" he said.

He warned that 40 out of the 74 private universities, representing about 54 per cent of private universities, were faith-based and encouraging them to draw from TETFund will open another window of national crisis.

The ASUU president also argued on the lack of geopolitical spread of the institutions as over 70 per cent of the universities are concentrated in two or three zones of the country which will further raise eyebrows about government using public funds to support private universities in some geopolitical zones.

On the bill to fund tertiary hospitals, he said the National Assembly in the 2018 budget, actualised the one per cent consolidated revenue fund allocated to the health sector as stipulated in the National Health Act of 2014 which should give the health sector enough fund to take care of teaching hospitals that are strictly under the Federal Ministry of Health.

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Lalasticlala

Sule are they(privates) asking you to build buildings for them? Or just to contribute to research and capacity devt of staff.

HigherEd:

He maintained that including private universities as beneficiaries of TETFund would be most unfair since private individuals who owned most of the institutions were already charging pupils exorbitant fees with a view to making profits

What of those that aren't charging above the subsidy some private universities enjoy?

Example is UI. They get around N13bn from FG and that translates to about N430,000 per student yearly. So will TETFund include private schools charging less than this figure?

HigherEd:

He warned that 40 out of the 74 private universities, representing about 54 per cent of private universities, were faith-based and encouraging them to draw from TETFund will open another window of national crisis.

The ASUU president also argued on the lack of geopolitical spread of the institutions as over 70 per cent of the universities are concentrated in two or three zones of the country which will further raise eyebrows about government using public funds to support private universities in some geopolitical zones.

I knew it... Kukuma say the whole truth and stop hiding. ... The fear has always been that churches are the most invested in the education sector, therefore if privates are funded under Tetfund it could sip into the hands of church universities mostly... With this line of thought and threat these people just subtly jettisoned the whole idea of giving supportive funds to aid private unis.

Another issue is that Northern Nigeria does not have many universities. The only functional private university in Northwest, Alqalam university(Islamic) by the way receives funding from the state govt.

So this title should read Funding For Private Unis rejected For Fear It would Benefit Southerners And Christians More.

I have always suspected this would happen even before this public hearing took place and I'm even more saddened that churches are begging for Tetfund. Now the funny thing is folks from Ansarudeen also begged for Tetfund because many of their universities are on one leg too, and even worse off than the church own but the idea that church universities would benefit more is reason for these folks to jettison the whole idea.

Churches be prosperous, be prosperous! And stop begging govt to help run schools they never forced us to establish. Just leave the entire education sector to govt and let them continue failing woefully at it.