The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has stated that state universities are meant to be funded by the state and state governments, News About Nigeria reports.
The President of ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this in an interview on Channels Television on Thursday.
He noted that anyone establishing a university is responsible for funding the universities, adding that the federal government is responsible for funding federal universities; hence, the state governors should fund state universities.
He lamented that most governors duplicate universities in their states to get a piece of the pie from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
Osodeke noted that though TETFund is supposed to be an intervention fund for public universities, politicians and civil servants have used the fund as a cash cow to be milked dry through shady procurement processes and contract fraud.
“Any governor today establishing a university is eyeing TETFund as a source of funding.
“TETFund was created as an intervention fund, not the major funding. The universities belong to the federal government, and the government is supposed to fund them, and states are supposed to fund their own.
“It’s an intervention fund but there are people who want to have access to that money from the political circle, from the bureaucratic circle, at all costs. We are struggling with that.
“You see today where somebody comes from the TETFund and say, ‘I have a project for you and I am going to be the contractor. We want an open project.”
“Every university council should be allowed to run their projects with the stakeholders involved,” he stated.
He further noted that a structure should be created to carry stakeholders along in the process of how the money is allocated and spent openly and transparently.
He added that federal government officials are not interested in fixing the deplorable state of the tertiary education system in the country and are not ready to grant the decade-old demands of ASUU.
