The leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has warned the Senate President, Sen. Godswill Akpabio, and the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, against the potential consequences of abrogating the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) under the proposed Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024, which is currently before the National Assembly.
The Union vowed that it would not stand by and watch the denigration or obliteration of TETFund and would fight to keep the institution, which ASUU described as the backbone of Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions for the last one-and-a-half decades.
President of ASUU, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, in a statement on Friday in Abuja, said the Union has observed with keen interest the ongoing debate on the review of the tax system in the country.
He informed the lawmakers that arising from the tax bill is a clandestine proposal to abrogate the Education Tax.
Osodeke particularly pointed out that Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024 specifically states that only 50 percent of the Development Levy would be made available to TETFund in 2025 and 2026, while the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) would share the remaining percentages.
He said: “ASUU is alarmed by this dangerous and unpatriotic aspect of the proposed new tax regime, to wit: that the Education Tax, called Development Levy, used to bankroll TETFund’s programmes should be ceded to the newly established Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).
“ASUU notes with serious concern 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 66.7% in the 2027, 2028, and 2029 years of assessment, but 0% in the 2030 year of assessment and thereafter.
“The far-reaching consequence of the new tax system is that from 2030, all funds generated from the Development Levy will be passed to NELFUND.
“ASUU finds this development not only worrisome but also inimical to our national development objective because of the potential danger to the survival of TETFund,” he stated.
He further stated that TETFund has been the backbone for infrastructural development, postgraduate training, and research capacity building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions for the last one-and-a-half decades.
“ASUU is compelled by the circumstances to seriously observe that taking any percentage out of the Education Tax (Development Levy) to service another agency not recognised by the TETFund Act 2011 is illegal and should not be allowed to stand. Giving zero allocation of the Development Levy to TETFund 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 set public tertiary education back many years and undermine the modest gains in repositioning Nigerian universities for global recognition and transformative development.
“Annual support given to tertiary institutions by TETFund has substantially reduced industrial crises in many tertiary institutions. Renovation of old facilities, 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 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,” he stated.
The ASUU President added that abrogating the TETFund Act 2011, by design or default, would be a great disservice not just to education but to Nigeria as a nation.
“As a result, ASUU is urging the National Assembly, especially the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to do all within their capacity to protect TETFund from being abrogated under the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024.”
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