Tax Reform Bill: ASUU urges NASS to protect TETFund from abrogation

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has tasked the National Assembly to safeguard the Tertiary Education Tax Fund (TETFund) from being scrapped under the proposed Nigeria Tax Bill 2024.

The Union is concerned that abolishing TETFund would have severe consequences for Nigeria’s public education system.

This is even as it described as ‘dangerous and unpatriotic’ aspects of the proposed legislation that seeks to cede TETFund funding from the Education Tax to the newly established Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND).

ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this in a statement on Friday.

Prof. Osodeke noted that the far-reaching consequence of the new tax system is that, from 2030, all funds generated from the Development Levy (Education Tax) will be passed to NELFUND.

He described the development as not only worrisome but also inimical to our national development objective “because of the potential danger to the survival of TETFund.”

Citing Ghana as a case study, the don expressed concern that this is coming at a time when other African countries are borrowing a leaf from Nigeria to set up their intervention agency in the tertiary education subsector.

READ ALSO:SSANU joins ASUU to cripple activities at Taraba university

“ASUU notes with serious concern Section 59(3) of the Nigeria Tax Bill (NTB) 2024, which specifically states that only 50 per cent 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 66.7 per cent in 2027, 2028, and 2029 years of assessment,” but “0 per cent in 2030 year of assessment and thereafter,” he said.

Osodeke added: “While viewing TETFund as the backbone for infrastructural development, postgraduate training, and research capacity building in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions in the last one-and-a-half decades, ASUU is compelled by the circumstance to seriously observe that taking any percentage out of the Education Tax (Development Levy) to service another agency not known to the TETFund Act 2011 is illegal and should not be allowed to stand; giving zero allocation of Development Levy to TETFund from 2030 is a technical way of abrogating the agency. The purported admonishment that TETFund should seek innovative ways of generating its funds is spurious and ill-advised because, as a creation of an Act, the institution dies without the fund.

“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 support given to tertiary institutions by TETFund has 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.”