The Benin Zone of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has described the newly introduced tax reform bills now undergoing consideration in the National Assembly, as a coup against tertiary institutions in the country.
The Zonal Coordinator, ASUU Benin Zone, Prof. Monday Lewis Igbafen, stated this on Friday while addressing journalists on their position on the bills.
It described the introduction of the bills as a deliberate ploy to destroy the education system of the 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.”
“The Union said it is alarmed by Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024, which states that only 50% of the Development Levy would be made available to TETFund in 2025 while NITDA, NISENI and NELFUND would share the remaining percentages.
“The consequence of this Section is that TETFund will receive 66% in 2027, 2028 and 2029 years of assessment and 0% thereafter, especially from 2030.
“It is important to alert the Nigerian people that the new tax bill is inimical to the well-being of education of our people because of its danger to the continued existence of TETFund.
“As a Union of intellectuals, we vehemently reject this 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.”
“Nigeria remains one of the worst countries in the world with abysmally low annual budgetary allocation to education.
“Against the 26% benchmark of budgetary allocation to education prescribed by the United Nations, Nigeria in past few years has continued to oscillate between 5% and 7% with Tinubu government affirmation retaining 7% budgetary allocation to education in its 2025 Budget.
“As a Union, we are scandalized by the recent Government attempt to foist on us a Tax Reform Bill whose specific provision is detrimentally harmful to the educational well-being of the Nigerian people.
“Our Union, ASUU conceptualized TETFund, brought it to its concrete fruition and relevancs in the transformation of tertiary institutions in the country. Since its formation, TETFund have indisputably remained the cornerstone of rapid transformation of tertiary institutions in terrns of manpower, infrastructural and academic development.
“In fact, TETFund impacts 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.
“We are 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 repositioníng Nigerian universities for global reckoning and transformative development.
“Education is a public good and government must not be allowed to destroy Nigerían tertiary education,” Igbafen said.
