ASUU rejects calls to include private varsities as beneficiaries of TETFund interventions

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has kicked against the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) making private universities beneficiary of its interventions.

TETFund, established in 2011, disburses, manages, and monitors education tax for government-owned tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The scheme provides supplementary support to all levels of public tertiary institutions.

The main financial inflow available to TETFund is the two percent education tax paid from the assessable profit of companies registered in Nigeria.

In recent times, however, there have been calls from some stakeholders to include privately-owned tertiary institutions as beneficiaries of TETFund.

Emmanuel Osodeke, the president of ASUU, spoke of the union’s position on this at a two-day interactive session between TETFund and all unions of beneficiary institutions.

Osodeke said such a move would lead to the proliferation of private universities devoid of quality.

He urged the fund to work more on the monitoring method of its projects across the country.

The ASUU president said the project performance among the beneficiary institutions has been uneven despite that some of them received the same amount of money.

He added that TETFund must begin to sanction non-performing institutions.

Osodeke also called for the abolition of what he described as “stakeholders fund” among these institutions.

“ASUU will continue to embark on strike until the right thing is done in our tertiary institutions,” he said.