From Scholastica Hir, Makurdi
The Academic Staff Union of Universities Nsukka Zone (ASUU-NSUKKA Zone) has kicked against the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024, calling on members of the National Assembly to rise and prevent the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) from being abrogated under the new Bill.
ASUU-Nsukka Zone, which comprises Benue State University, Makurdi (ASUU-BSU), Enugu State University of Technology, Enugu (ASUU-ESUT), Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi (ASUU-FUAM), Federal University, Lokoja (ASUU-FULokoja), Federal University, Wukari (ASUU-FUWukari), Kogi State University, Anyigba (ASUU-KSU), and University of Nigeria, Nsukka (ASUU-UNN), said the NTB, as proposed by the government, would be catastrophic for Nigerian tertiary education.
Speaking at a press conference in Makurdi on Thursday, the Zonal Coordinator of ASUU-Nsukka Zone, Comrade Raphael Amokaha, observed that the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024 is nothing but “a bill to end the hope of tertiary education for children of the Nigerian working class.”
The NTB 2024, which emanated from the executive and is before the National Assembly, seeks to review the Nigerian tax system as it currently exists. ASUU-Nsukka Zone, and indeed ASUU National, expressed their horror at the contents of the bill, particularly regarding the education tax, also called the development levy, and its implications for TETFUND.
“The bill proposes that the education tax shall cease by 2030, five years from now. This education tax, which the government has proposed to end by 2030, is the source of funds for the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND.
“Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024, as proposed, specifically states that only 50% of the development levy would be made available to TETFUND in 2025 and 2026, while NITDA, NASENI, and the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) would share the remaining percentages.
“TETFUND will also receive 66.7% in 2027, 2028, and 2029 years of assessment but 0% in the 2030 year of assessment and thereafter.”
“This simply means that by 2030, all the proceeds from the development levy will be channelled into NELFUND, an agency that has not firmly taken root yet, if it ever will, while TETFUND will be strangled to death.
“It must be stated here very clearly that taking any percentage out of the education tax (development levy) to service another agency not known to the TETFUND Act 2011 is illegal.”
He explained that TETFUND was wholly a creation of ASUU when, in 1992, under the leadership of Comrade Attahiru Jega, the union had a prolonged strike action during the government of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
To resolve the protracted struggle, according to him, the government asked the union for a solution on how to fund the demands of the union, particularly with regards to infrastructural development and staff development, to which the union suggested an Education Tax Fund (ETF), which the government accepted. “So TETFUND, as it is known today, was birthed as the Education Tax Fund (ETF).”
He noted that since its creation, the accomplishments of TETFUND cannot be overemphasised, as 80 to 95 percent of the developments observed in many new and old universities, namely FULafia, BSU, NSUK, UNN, and UniJos, have been substantially derived from TETFUND funding. He added that “without TETFUND, these universities will not exist or, at best, will be glorified secondary schools with carrying capacities of not more than a thousand students each.”
The zone insisted that, with TETFUND currently providing intervention to 244 public tertiary institutions in Nigeria, it is intriguing why anyone would want to kill it by channelling its statutory funds to NELFUND, which has a very different mandate: student loans.
“NELFUND is charged with the responsibility of giving student loans, while TETFUND has the mandate to develop infrastructure and build capacity. The student loan is clearly designed in such a manner that less than half of Nigerian students will benefit from the scheme, and its sustainability has not been tested in any way, whereas any lecture room, laboratory, or clinic erected by TETFUND will serve all the students.”
They warned that “this plan to kill a development agency in preference to a poorly thought-through, untested loan scheme is illogical, myopic, and anti-people, especially the middle class and the lower strata of society.”
Amokaha therefore called on the Nigerian government to improve the operations and sustainability of the agency, rather than planning to emasculate or abrogate it.
He said ASUU has resolved not to stand by and watch the denigration and obliteration of TETFUND, an agency that has discharged its mandate decently in the last 30 years, adding 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.
The union urged 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. They also called on visitors to state universities, which also have polytechnics and colleges of education, to rise in defence of their institutions against this new existential threat.
He said, “Members of the House of Reps and the Senate must remember that they owe their constituents this responsibility of ensuring that their youth can attend higher institutions without the threat of exorbitant, unaffordable fees in either the public or private institutions, for that will be the cost of killing TETFUND.”