President of ASUU, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, made the allegation on Thursday in Abuja at the public presentation of the maiden edition of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Monthly Digest by the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Dr Abdullahi Bichi Baffa.
He spoke in response to a comment by the Chairman of Council of Heads of Polytechnics, Mr Masud Elelu, that the Monthly Digest which encapsulates activities of TETFund would put to rest usual suspicion by staff unions on the utilisation of funds allocated to the instructions.
ASUU President, said the issue of transparency was of utmost importance to the Union, saying operations by many Vice Chancellors of universities were shrouded in secrecy.
He said the Union has had cases were lecturers awarded scholarships by TETFund and money released but ended up being short-charged by Vice Chancellors.
He said there were also cases of repetition of the same projects already implemented in school budgets.
Ogunnyemi, said: “The Head of Rectors of Polytechnics has indeed said a lot of things that I should have talked about but a will just add a few. In the first place, the issue of transparency is of paramount importance to us in ASUU.
“In most of our institutions, our engagement with those called chief executives, well, they call themselves chief executives, we don’t call them chief executives because we see them as first among equals, is of mutual suspicion.
“They are expected to be transparent and accountable. I am happy to mention that we have always suspected them. Yes, I won’t hide it. We have had cases where scholarships are given to lecturers by TETFund and funds released, but get to the beneficiary lecturers about half or if they were supposed to be paid in dollars, they are paid in naira.
“All these manipulations were going on, so we always suspected them. This Digest is like a report card and it will be an instrument for monitoring them, and instrument for attacking them. We have seen situations where those they call chief executives, will repeat projects that have been implemented because they want to siphon some part of the allocations.
“With this, we will be able to track and say but in the last publication of TETFund Monthly Digest, we saw this as a project. It will give room for us to better engage the Heads of the institutions,” he said.
The ASUU President further raised concern that there was clandestine move by some members of the National Assembly to derail TETFund from its original mandate by amending the laws of the agency to expand its scope of intervention to private universities.
He called on all Stakeholders to support the Union in defending statutory laws establishing Tertiary Education Trust Fund, saying Tetfund should not be the primary source of funding development of Tertiary Institutions.
He said the Monthly Digest would help the union monitor the activities of the fund.
Chairman of Council of Heads of Polytechnics, Mr Masud Elelu, said the beneficiary institutions have been yearning for this kind of publication a long time past to provide information for the stakeholders.
He added the Digest would douse the situation where a lot of misgivings were being expressed in the past, saying some heads of institutions do not even allow their staff know what is allocated to them.
He commended the introduction of Access Clinic and project defence by the TETFund management to further add value to the utilisation of the intervention fund.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Dr Baffa, said the Monthly Digest was to promote transparency and report intervention activities of the fund and would be used to report facts, figures on project approvals, research grants, and other funds disbursed.
Baffa emphasised that the bulletin would raise the transparency level in the management of the agency.
“We felt approvals should not be between the funds and the institutions alone but also the members of the public. The publication will also inform taxpayers on what their taxes deducted for education is used for,” Baffa said.
and then