Human rights activist, Femi Falana has urged the Academic Staff Union of Universities to ensure the collection of N463 billion education intervention fund in the custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria while addressing the 20th Delegates Conference of ASUU at the Tafawa Balewa University in Bauchi State, on Monday, called for the immediate disbursement of the fund to federal and state governments owned universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.
Falana also commended the union for the initiative which led to the enactment of the TETFUND Act in 1992. The law 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, Falana 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, 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, nothing 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 TETFUND.
Falana assured that the bulk of the stolen fund would be recovered by the anti-graft agencies which are currently probing the fraud.
Source: News Agencies
