Reject Proposed Nigeria’s Tax Bill 2024 to Save Public Tertiary Institutions

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ASUU Coordinator Owerri Zone, Prof Dennis Aribodor, middle, reading an address during a press conference organized by the group, Jan 11, 2025, at ASUU Secretariat, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State.

– ASUU Begs NASS, Education Stakeholders

By Micheal Nnebife

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, Owerri Zone, has called on the National Assembly and critical stakeholders in Nigeria’s education system to reject the proposed Nigeria’s Tax Bill, as it concerns abrogation of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, to save public tertiary institutions in the country.

The ASUU Zone, comprising Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam, Anambra State; Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State; Imo State University, Owerri, Imo State; Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State; and Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, made the call at a press conference the zone organized in Awka, Anambra State, on Saturday, 11th January.

The Coordinator of the Zone, Prof Dennis Aribodor, told the press that abrogating the TETFund under the Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024, amounted to killing of public tertiary education in Nigeria.

His words, ‘ASUU, Owerri Zone, has observed with keen interest the ongoing debate on the review of the tax system in Nigeria which is currently before the National Assembly. Arising from the tax bill is the proposed abrogation of Education Tax.

‘ASUU is alarmed by this dangerous and unpatriotic aspect of the proposed new tax regime to wit: that the Education Tax, called Development Levy, used to bankroll TETFund’s programmes, should be ceded to the newly established Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND),’ Prof Aribodor said.

Aribodor quoted ASUU, saying, ‘Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024 which specifically states that only 50% of the Development Levy would be made available to TETFund in 2025 and 2026 while NITDA, NASENI, and NELFUND would share the remaining percentages.

‘TETFund will also receive 66â…”% in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment but 0% in 2030 year of assessment and thereafter.

‘This is alarming and should not be allowed, particularly when priority has not been given to funding public education through budgetary allocation by successive federal and state governments.

‘To substantiate this, 7% was allocated to education as against 15% in the manifesto of APC (the party in power) and over 20% recommended by UNESCO.’

Aribodor said ASUU Owerri Zone found the development not only worrisome but also inimical to national development objective because of the potential danger it posed to the survival of TETFund.

Describing TETFund as the backbone for infrastructural development, postgraduate training and research capacity building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions in the last 15 years, Prof Aribodor argued that ‘Taking any percentage out of the Education Tax (Development Levy) to service another agency not known to the TETFund Act 2011 was illegal and should not be allowed to stand.

He further stressed that giving zero allocation of Development Levy to TETFund as from 2030 was a technical way of killing the agency and public tertiary education.

According to him, ‘Replacing TETFund with NELFUND is comparable to killing a parent to keep a newborn child alive; it is unethical and against the principle of natural justice.

‘The impact of TETFund on the campus of every tertiary institution in Nigeria is beyond description; abrogating it will take public tertiary education many years back and undermine the modest gains in repositioning Nigerian universities for global reckoning and transformative development.

‘Annual supports given to tertiary institutions by TETFund have substantially reduced industrial crises in many tertiary institutions; renovation of old facilities and provision of new ones and opportunities for staff development, leading to career advancement have doused labour-related agitations on our campuses.’

He contended that TETFund impacted not only tertiary-level education, but also the secondary, down to kindergarten.

‘It directly and/or indirectly supports the production of quality teachers and different categories of support staff in the entire educational system.

‘The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) borrowed from the Nigerian experience while some other African countries have recently visited to understudy TETFund; Nigeria should be improving on the operations and sustainability of the agency, and not planning to emasculate or abrogate it.

‘ASUU, Owerri Zone, has resolved not to stand by and watch the denigration or obliteration of TETfund which represents the positive testament to our 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 Owerri Zone is urging all stakeholders in the Nigeria Education Project, particularly the National Assembly, to do all within their capacity to protect TETFund from being abrogated under the Nigeria Tax Bill, 2024, and save the killing of public tertiary education,’ Prof Aribodor urged.

Aribodor, who further called on the government to involve academics when formulating a policy, for sustainable development of the country, said, the federal and state-owned tertiary institutions were currently referred to as TETFund Institutions because most projects therein were funded from that interventionist agency.

‘Therefore, it should not be killed through the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024,’ he further pleaded.

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