The N320.3 billion intervention cash for tertiary institutions in the nation that was authorized by the Federal Government is to be redistributed, according to the Academic Staff Union of Universities, as captioned by the Entrepreneurng report.
Sources state that N320,345,040,835 will serve as the country’s 2023 intervention money for public tertiary education institutions. The president is Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retired).
This information was provided by the TETFund’s Executive Secretary, Sonny Echono, on Wednesday in Abuja at the Fund’s annual strategic planning meeting with all heads of beneficiary institutions. To improve a more robust delivery of the agency’s mandate, Echono claimed that the meeting was a way to get feedback and assess the effectiveness of its intervention lines.
According to the head of the TETFund, each university would receive N1,154,732,133.00, each polytechnic institute will receive N699,344,867.00, and each college of education will receive N800,862,602. In an interview with Channels Television on Thursday, ASUU President Emmanuel Osodeke advocated for the redistribution.
He demanded that the budget be redistributed to make sure that 90% of what has been granted goes to polytechnics and universities rather than being preserved as bureaucracy.
When you check the allocation of about N1.2 billion to universities and other organizations, you discover that the sum of all the universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education comes to just about N186 billion, allocated out of about N320, leaving a balance of N132 billion that has not been accounted for. What do we intend to do with the N132 billion, or 41% of the total? What is it for, bureaucracy?
This is what has been happening at TETFund, and I believe it is necessary to look more closely at what is going on there. When the TETFund was being negotiated by ASUU, the intention was for the money to be transferred to the institutions rather than 41% being retained for some other use.
“I believe that this fund needs to be redistributed to make sure that it covers 90% of the amount that has been authorized to go to polytechnics and universities rather than being held for administrative costs or anything else. You must inform the public of what the TETFund is doing with the remaining N132 billion, the speaker continued.”
The Federal Government’s approval of the fund was praised by Osodeke. Although the N320 billion fund is a positive step and represents some of the goals we fought for in 1994, Osodeke noted that there are still certain problems that need to be resolved. He did, however, clarify that the strike-related problems are still open.
According to reports, the ASUU president said that since the lecturers ended their strike in 2022, the Federal Government has failed to meet the union’s requests.
He claimed that the Federal Government had not even called a meeting with the lecturers after the union ended its eight-month strike.
Conclusion
According to the current administration, once the strike is done, the problem is settled. They are unaware that a strike is a symptom of a larger issue. They no longer care about the issue. No meetings have been scheduled since we ended the strike in response to a court order. No money has been paid.
Source: Punch
