The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nsukka zone in Enugu State, on Thursday said that the benefits of students loan scheme of the Federal Government must not replace the agency funding infrastructures in tertiary institutions across the country as it had yet to pass the test of time.

Our correspondent reports that ASUU has vowed to fight relentlessly within its capacity to save the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) established in 2011 followingi ts struggle from being abrogated under the Nigeria Tax Bill (2024) for the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFund).

Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Raphael Amokaha, while briefing journalists in Makurdi on a text entitled, ?The Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024: A Bill To End The Hope Of Tertiary Education For Children Of The Nigerian Working Class,? said the intention of the bill was disturbing as it seeks to kill the TETFund in favour of the NELFund which remains unrealistic.

Amokaha said, ?Federal and state-owned tertiary institutions are currently referred to as ?TETFund Institutions? because most projects are funded from this interventionist agency on which a death sentence has been passed through the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024.

?In view of the foregoing, it becomes intriguing why anyone will want to kill TETFUND by channeling its statutory funds to NELFUND which has a very different mandate, student loans. NELFUND is charged with the responsibility of given students? loans while TETFUND has the mandate to develop infrastructure and build capacity.

?The student loan is clearly designed in such a manner that less than half of Nigerian students will benefit from the scheme and its sustainability has not been tested in anyway, whereas any lecture room, laboratory or clinic erected by TETFUND will serve all the students. This plan to kill a development agency in preference to a poorly thought through, untested loan scheme is illogical, myopic, and anti-people, especially the middle class and the lower strata of society.?

The union argued that Nigeria should be improving on the operations and sustainability of the agency, not planning to emasculate or abrogate it, reminding the federal and state governments that TETFUND is an interventionist agency and governments must remember that as proprietors they have a duty to fund tertiary institutions not merely through interventions but through budgetary allocations.

The zonal ASUU therefore resolved not to stand by and watch the denigration and obliteration of TETfund, an agency that has discharged its mandate decently in the past thirty years, which represents a positive testament to their union?s constructive engagements with Nigerian governments since 1992.

?It is our considered view that abrogating the TETFund Act 2011, by design or default, will be a great disservice not just to education but to Nigeria as a nation. As a result, ASUU is urging the National Assembly, especially the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to do all within their capacity to protect TETFund from being abrogated under the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024.

?In the same vein, we urge visitors to state universities, who also have polytechnics and colleges of Education to rise to the defence of their institutions against this new existential threat. Members of House of Reps and the Senate must remember that they owe their constituents this responsibility of ensuring that their youth can attend higher institutions without the threat of exorbitant, unaffordable fees in either the public or private institutions for that will be the cost of killing TETFund,? the union posited. (Daily Trust)

Update news