Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Benin zone, has kicked against the Nigeria Tax Reform Bill 2024, saying it is inimical to the wellbeing of the nation’s educational system.
The Benin zone of ASUU, through its zonal coordinator, Prof. Monday Igbafen expressed the union’s concerned during a press conference in Benin.
He said the introduction of the new bill will do the sector no good rather, it will cripple it further.
“Our Union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is compelled once again to address you on Nigerian Government’s deliberate ploy to destroy the education system of this country through deliberate act to wind up a critical institution that has been the backbone of the continued sustenance of tertiary institutions in the country.
“Recall that our Union, ASUU has been entangled with the Nigerian government over deliberate starvation of funds which resulted in parlour infrastructural decay of teaching facilities, students’ welfare and low staff remuneration and retardation in public universities in the country”, Igbafen said.
Prof. Igbafen said Nigeria remains one of the worst countries in the world with abysmally low annual budgetary allocation to education.
Igbafen added that against the 26 percent benchmark of budgetary allocation to education prescribed by the United Nations, Nigeria in past few years has continued to oscillate between 5 percent and 7 percent with Tinubu government affirmation retaining 7 percent budgetary allocation to education in its 2025 Budget.
The ASUU zonal coordinator recall further that successive governments in the Nigerian State have not hidden their hatred for the mass of the Nigerian people through the formulation, enactment, enforcement and implementation of anti-people policies and wicked laws.
He alleged that as a Union, they were scandalized by the recent Government attempt to foist on them a Tax Reform Bill whose specific provision is detrimentally harmful to the educational wellbeing of the Nigerian people.
He maintained that the Union, ASUU is alarmed by Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024 which states that only 50 percent of the Development Levy would be made available to TETFund in 2025 while NITDA, NISENI and NELFUND would share the remaining percentages.
He argued that the consequence of the section is that, TETFund will receive 66 percent in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment and zero percent thereafter, especially from 2030.
He pointed out that, it is important to alert the Nigerian people that the new tax bill is inimical to the well-being of education of the people because of its danger to the continued existence of TETFund.
He stressed that as a Union of intellectuals, they will vehemently reject, the tax reform bill, especially for its attempt to erode the concrete relevance of TETFund to the infrastructural development, postgraduate training and research capacity building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions.
He said their Union, ASUU conceptualized TETFund, brought it to its concrete fruition and relevance in the transformation of tertiary institutions in the country.
He said since its formation, TETFund has indisputably remained the cornerstone of rapid transformation of tertiary institutions in terms of manpower, infrastructural and academic development.
He added that while the Nigerian people are in the wilderness over the recalcitrance of government to resolve the unresolved issues arising from the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, their Union, ASUU, is worried by the inclusion of the “death” of TETFund, effective 2030 in a tax reform bill that has become an albatross to the Tinubu’s government.
He said ASUU is therefore calling for mass resistance against this potent threat to the life-wire of tertiary education in our country because the impeding abrogation of TETFund will take public tertiary education many years back and undermine the modest gains in repositioning Nigerian universities for global reckoning and transformative development just as he said, education is a public good and government must not be allowed to destroy Nigerian tertiary education.