The Benin zone of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, on Friday described the Federal Government’s tax reform bills as a coup against tertiary education in the country.

Newsmen reports that the union made the remarks at a press conference held in Benin City.

The Zonal Coordinator of the zone, Monday Lewis Igbafen, who briefed the press alleged that the Federal Government is planning to destroy the educational system by winding up the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND.

Igbafen noted that TETFUND has been the backbone of the continued sustenance of tertiary institutions in the country.

He opined that Nigeria remains one of the worst countries in the world with abysmally low annual budgetary allocation to education as against the 26 percent benchmark prescribed by the United
Nations.

He said Nigeria in the past few years has continued to oscillate between 5 percent and 7 percent with the President Bola Tinubu government’s affirmation of retaining 7 percent budgetary allocation to education in the 2025 Budget.

The Benin zone ASUU coordinator said the union is alarmed by Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024.

He said the section stated that only 50 percent of the Development Levy would be made available to TETFund in 2025 while National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI and Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFUND, would share the remaining percentages.

According to him, the consequence of the section is that TETFund will receive 66 percent in 2027, 2028 and 2029, and 0 percent 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.

“Recall that our Union, ASUU has
been entangled with the Nigerian government over deliberate starvation of funds which resulted in the parlour infrastructural decay of teaching facilities, students welfare and low staff remuneration and retardation in public universities in the country.

“Our Union, ASUU conceptualized TETFund, brought it to its concrete fruition and relevance 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 terms 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,” he said.

Igbafen, who posited that education is a public good, advised that the government must not be allowed to destroy the nation’s tertiary education system.

While stating that the Nigerian people are in the wilderness over the recalcitrance of government to resolve the issues arising from the 2009 FGNASUU Agreement, he said the union 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 government.

The union called for mass resistance against “this potent threat to the life-wire of tertiary education in our country because the impending 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”.