The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has raised an alarm over TETFund’s unremitted N132 billion, representing 41 per cent of the N320 billion authorised funds for revitalising tertiary institutions.
ASUU revealed that only 58 per cent of authorized funding had been allocated to public tertiary institutions in the country.
Recall that the Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono, disclosed on Wednesday that President Muhammadu Buhari okayed the disbursement of N320 billion to Nigerian public tertiary institutions to resolve some of ASUU’s complaints from the strike last year. Eyes Of Lagos reports,
The funds were intended to revitalise the Nigerian public tertiary institutions as part of the union’s four cardinal requests and a renegotiation of the 2009 government-ASUU agreement.
However, the national president of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, said the TETFund distribution ratio adds up to N186 billion when every public tertiary institution is accounted for, just 58 per cent of the total approved for release by the president.
The university don made this known during a Channels Television interview on Thursday, saying TETFund must account for the undistributed funds.
“What are we using that N132 billion [for], which is 41% of the total money? Is it for bureaucracy or what?
“We need a redistribution of this fund to ensure that it accounts for 90% of what has been approved to go to universities, polytechnic and not kept as bureaucracy or whatever,” he added.
