Human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana SAN has urged the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to ensure that the sum of N463 billion education intervention fund lying fallow at the Central Bank of Nigeria is immediately disbursed by the TETFUND to the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education owned by the federal and state governments.
While addressing the 20th Delegates Conference of ASUU taking place at the Tafawa Balewa University in Bauchi State on Tuesday, Mr. Falana commended the union for the initiative which led to the enactment of the TETFUND Act in 1992. The law has made it compulsory for all companies operating in Nigeria to contribute education tax of 2 percent from their annual profits to the funding of publicly owned tertiary institutions in the country.
However, the Senior Advocate stunned participants at the conference when he disclosed that the tertiary institutions did not access N250 billion from the account of TETFUND from 2011-2016 and that the sum of N213.4 billion is outstanding for 2017. Mr. Falana said that the 78 public universities are entitled to about 50 percent of the total sum of N463 billion in the TETFUND Account.
While urging the TETFUND board to urgently review the cumbersome guidelines for accessing the fund Mr. Falana called on the ASUU and other campus unions to monitor the collection of the education tax, the disbursement and management of the intervention fund by the authorities of tertiary institutions.
He informed the ASUU leaders that due to the failure of the staff and student unions to monitor the fund over the years not less than N250 billion has been criminally diverted from the TETFUND by some unscrupulous school administrators with the connivance of the former board members of the TETFUND. Mr. Falana assured that the bulk of the stolen fund would be recovered by the anti graft agencies which are currently probing the fraud.
Mr. Falana advised TETFUND to stop imposing a ban on institutions from accessing the fund because some past administrators failed to render account of the monies collected by them. Instead of imposing collective punishment on the innocent staff and students of such institutions Mr. Falana suggested to TETFUND to submit the names of such administrators to the police and the anti graft agencies for investigation and possible prosecution.
Since successive governments have paid lip service to the funding of education Mr. Falana said that without the intervention of TETFUND the public tertiary institutions would have collapsed. As the various governments have failed to make provision for capital projects in public schools TETFUND has become the only source of funding infrastructural development and research in all the public tertiary institutions.
Mr Falana believes that if TETFUND can make available N213 in 2017 alone the body has the capability to make a greater impact on the public tertiary institutions if the education tax is effectively collected and monitored. Mr. Falana made a strong case for the involvement of all stakeholders in the collection of the education tax.
He particularly taxed ASUU to deploy its intellectual resources to collate information of all companies that are liable to pay the education tax as less than 50 percent of all companies operating in the country are currently paying the tax. The human rights activist also advised ASUU to collaborate with the Federal Inland Revenue Service for effective collection of the education tax. โHaving fought for the enactment ASUU has a legitimate right and moral duty to ensure that the law is well implementedโ Mr. Falana concluded.
