Victoria Mbangwa
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has warned that the federal government’s proposed replacement of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) with the National Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) could jeopardize Nigeria’s education system and erode decades of progress in the sector.
Speaking at a press conference in Ibadan on Sunday, the Ibadan zone of ASUU—comprising several universities, including the University of Ibadan and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology—expressed concern over the inclusion of the plan in the proposed Public Benefit and Taxation Bill (PBTB) of 2024.
The zonal coordinator, Professor Oyegoke Oyebamiji, described TETFund as a critical lifeline for Nigeria’s higher education system, highlighting its contributions to infrastructure, academic research, capacity building, and library development in public institutions.
According to him, “TETFund, which was the brainchild of the union, had greatly helped in improving infrastructural development in Nigerian tertiary institutions, aided capacity building of members of academic staff, contributed immensely to promotion of cutting-edge researches, assisted in organising seminars, workshops and learned conferences both locally and internationally, helped in equipping scanty scientific and engineering laboratories, helped in purchasing books to stock obsolete libraries and useful in providing state-of-art e-libraries in Nigerian tertiary institutions, to mention but a few.
“It is retrogressive and inimical to the desirable future of the Nigerian public education system.”
ASUU contends that diverting Education Tax funds to other agencies outside TETFund’s mandate would be illegal and undermine the quality of public education, especially when governments at all levels have consistently underfunded the sector.
The union also called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the National Assembly to prioritize education and resist external pressures, such as those from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that could lead to policy decisions detrimental to Nigeria’s long-term development.
ASUU further warned that abandoning TETFund could spark protests from education stakeholders, emphasizing that the fund’s achievements must not be eroded by short-sighted policy changes.
