TETFund overstepping boundaries with varsity categorisation, ASUU warns

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has strongly condemned the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), over its new policy classifying public universities into “tenable” and “non-tenable” categories for its local postgraduate scholarship scheme.

The union accussed the agency of overstepping its legal boundaries and drifting into a regulatory role it has no mandate to perform.

The Academic Staff Training and Development, (AST&D), scheme, which selects beneficiaries for local postgraduate studies, has recently come under fire from the union.

Speaking on the development, ASUU national president, Professor Christopher Piwuna, expressed deep discomfort with the classification, stating that it threatens the core foundation of public tertiary education in the country.

Piwuna reminded the leadership of TETFund that its primary mandate is to manage, disburse and monitor the 2 percent education tax funds collected from registered companies.

These funds, he emphasised, are meant to rehabilitate, restore and consolidate public tertiary educational institutions across Nigeria, not to dictate institutional choices.

“TETFund cannot jump into a regulatory role of deciding which university Nigerians would attend or which ones they would not,” the ASUU president stated.

Piwuna noted that the policy would trigger massive overcrowding in a few “preferred” universities, if allowed to persist.

This, he argued, would inevitably collapse the supervision structure for postgraduate candidates, especially given the acute shortage of academic experts across various programmes in the country.

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The union leader further described the tagging of several public institutions as “non-tenable” as highly discriminatory and counterproductive.

He warned that the policy would drastically reduce student enrolment rates and severely demoralise senior academics and experts working within the affected universities.

Instead of sidelining institutions, ASUU urged the government and the agency to prioritise structural development across the board.

“Why not upgrade all first to third generation public universities where experienced academics are likely to be found to the expected standard?,” Piwuna questioned.

He maintained that deploying the agency’s resources to institutionalise discriminatory practices openly violates the TETFund Act of 2011.

Reaffirming the union’s stance on accountability, Professor Piwuna declared that ASUU would remain steadfast in resisting any guidelines or policies designed to compromise the agency.

“ASUU shall continue to oppose any policy that makes TETFund vulnerable to personal and group interests in whatever guise,” he concluded.