The clamour by proprietors of private universities in Nigeria for inclusion in the supplementary education funds from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) is gradually but steadily gathering momentum, BusinessDay findings have revealed.
Of the 129 universities currently in operation in Nigeria, private universities constitute 50, representing over one-third of the number of universities with operating license to award degree certificates.
Concerned stakeholders who spoke to BusinessDay, hinged their clamour for a review of the act setting up the fund based on the fact that TETFund is a pool of tax funds from private companies, for the development of education in the country, stressing that exclusion of private universities from such funds would undermine development of human capital in tertiary education in the country.
TETFund was originally established as Education Trust Fund (ETF) by Act No 7 of 1993 as amended by Act No 40 of 1998 (now repealed and replaced with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act 2011).
READ ALSO:
It was established to serve as an intervention agency to provide supplementary support to all levels of public tertiary institutions, with the main objective of using funding alongside project management for the rehabilitation, restoration and consolidation of Tertiary Education in Nigeria.
According to the TETFund Act, the fund was established and charged with the responsibility for imposing, managing and disbursing the education tax to public tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Education sector watchers are of the opinion that the main reason for setting up the fund was to serve as an intervention for tertiary education in the area of infrastructure, and see no reason why the act should not be reviewed to benefit private universities who also contribute substantially to human capital development.
“I strongly support the case for private universities to benefit, in some form, from TETFund because it is a contribution from the private sector and hence equity demands that private higher education should also benefit”, Peter Okebukola, former executive secretary, National Universities Commission, says.
He adds that “both public and private higher institutions provide graduates for the same Nigerian economy, hence any attempts to bolster the economy through improving high level human resource development will be incomplete with support only for public higher institutions”.
For Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe, a professor and the inaugural vice chancellor of the new Federal University, Ndufu-Alike Ikwo, Ebonyi State, “to some extent, private universities are entitled to partake in funds from TETFund because they are also tax payers. Don’t forget they are also doing the same job of training human capital”.
Ibidapo-Obe, however argues that even if private universities are to get this fund, it should be closely monitored to ensure that only those that have graduated students and have followed up such graduates to their work place to ensure that employers are satisfied with the quality of such graduate should benefit.
“For every university, the condition for getting these funds need to be prioritised; I think the challenge is that government is unwilling to close down institutions if they don’t perform.
“Maybe we need to set up a trust fund that looks at the performance of universities. This trust fund should be over and above the National Universities Commission (NUC) which is a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Education, and should be empowered by law to close down any university that does not meet up to the expectation, without any recourse to law”, he said.
Isaac Adeyemi, vice chancellor, Bells University, Ota, says, “As proprietors of private universities, what we are saying is that TETFund is a fund that is obtained from the private sector, and our own students, by the time they graduate, are going to contribute their quota to the growth of the economy, either in the public or private sector”,
Adeyemi disclosed that the contribution from TETFund will enhance mobility of labour in the university system, adding, “there is nothing stopping professors from private university from going to public university to lecture”.
He further observes that in terms of infrastructural development, proprietors of private universities are not asking for 100 percent subvention; “what they are rather clamouring for, is for the government to make loans available to private universities at a single digit interest rate for infrastructural development”, stressing that this is another avenue to improve the quality of education.
“A call for the review of the act setting up TETFund has all along constituted the bottleneck to our clamour. But we know that there is nothing impossible; in addressing this, there is need to go through the National Assembly to amend that portion of the TETFUND act”, he added.
KELECHI EWUZIE
