Lecturers in the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, have called on religious and political leaders in the country to appeal to President Bola Tinubu to improve university education. The lecturers, under the auspices of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, FUTA branch, lamented that the Federal Government had not been taking the university education seriously, particularly in the area of funding.
The chairman of the union in FUTA, Pius Mogaji, stated this while speaking with journalists at the rally organised by the union on the campus of the university, on Thursday. According to him, for the past many years, the Federal Government had not allocated up to 10 per cent in annual national budget to education sector.
The don said, “Over the years, ASUU’s engagements with successive governments on funding of public universities have been predicated on scientifically established benchmark of annual budgetary requirements for education. Lately, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities specification of 15 per cent to 20 per cent educational budget for underdeveloped countries like Nigeria has been advocated by our union.
“However, there was no year in the last 10 years when allocation to education in the national budget was above 10 per cent. The average has hovered between five per cent and six per cent ASUU decries the deliberate and continued underfunding of state and federal universities because it degrades the capacity of the institutions and further under-develops Nigeria.
“The Federal Government recently decided to further reduce the resources available for TETFund intervention by channelling the fund accruable to the agency to the Students Education Loan Scheme. This is antithetical to the original intendment of the law establishing the Education Tax Fund which now operates as TETFund,” he said.
Mogaji also highlighted some of the demands of the union which include, release of withheld three and half months salaries on the account of 2022 strike, release of unpaid salaries of staff on sabbatical, part-times and adjunct appointment owing to the application of IPPIS, release of third party deductions such as check-off dues and cooperative contributions and funding for revitalisation of public universities (as partly captured in 2023 Federal Government Budget) among others.
He decried that the ASUU had been engaging the agents of government, particularly the Federal Ministry of Education and Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment on the demands in the last one year but nothing had come out of the several meetings.
“We are calling on all religion leaders, members of National Assembly and all reputable people in the society to help beg President Tinubu to attend to ASUU demands now and to kindly intervene in finding workable solutions to the lingering crisis in the best interest of the Nigerian university system and sustainable development of Nigeria,” he added.
Last Friday, ASUU said that only Tinubu’s intervention could save public universities from being thrown into another prolonged strike action. A letter, dated June 20, 2024, from ASUU also surfaced on Tuesday where the union wrote to Tinubu, over ten unresolved demands in the 2020 Memorandum of Action.
