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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has risen against the alleged plan by the proposed new tax system to tactically abrogate the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, registered the case and concerns of the Union at the public hearing on the new tax bill, 2024, organized by the National Assembly as part of the legislative process for the enacting of the new tax law.
He told the gathering that ASUU is seriously worried that the Education Tax otherwise known as Development Levy, used to bankroll TETFund’s programmes is about to be ceded to the newly established Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFund).
He made reference to section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024 which stated that only 50 per cent of the Development Levy will be made available to TETFund in 2025 and 2026, respectively, while NITDA, NASENI, and NELFund would share the remaining percentages, respectively.
“TETFund will also receive 66.7 per cent in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment, respectively, but zero percent in 2030 year of assessment and thereafter. This simply means that from 2030, all funds generated from the Development Levy would be passed to NELFund.
“With all sense of responsibility, ASUU finds this development not only worrisome but also inimical to our national development objective. We are deeply concerned about the fate of TETFund, because it is a positive testament to our constructive engagements with Nigerian governments since 1992.
“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. 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.”
The ASUU President insisted that taking any percentage out of the Education Tax (Development Levy) to service another agency not known to the TETFund Act 2011 is illegal, and should not be allowed to stand; and also giving zero allocation of Development Levy to TETFund as from 2030 is a technical way of abrogating the agency.
He described the planned replacement of TETFund with NELFund as killing a parent to keep a newborn child alive which is unethical and against the principle of natural justice.
He added: “The impact of TETFund on the campus of every tertiary institution in Nigeria is beyond description, thus 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.
“Also, 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.”
He insisted that TETFund impacts not only tertiary-level education, but also the secondary down to kindergarten, because it directly and/or indirectly supports the production of quality teachers and different categories of support staff in the entire educational system.
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