Nigeria Ranks Lowest In Education Budget In West Africa,ASUU Tackles FG

The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has berated the Federal Government for paying lip service to funding the education sector, while also calling for an increase of education tax to 10 per cent.

Osodeke, who revealed that Nigeria ranks lowest in education budgets across the West African sub-region, noted that the least budgetary allocation to education by any country in West Africa is 15 per cent, while the highest is 32 per cent.

He spoke on Tuesday at a One-Day Workshop on ‘Emerging Areas of Students Needs in Beneficiary Institutions’, organised by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in Abuja.

Osodeke lamented the neglect of education across all tiers of government, noting however that only Enugu, Abia and Oyo states have voted more than 20 per cent of their budgets to the sector.

He insisted on the call by ASUU for an upward review of education tax to 10 per cent. He said this implementation would raise TETFund funding from the current N600 billion annually to N3 trillion.

He said: “We have done a survey of West African countries. The least budgetary allocation to education by any country in West Africa is 15 per cent. The highest is 32 per cent.

“We are in a country where we give 4.5 to 7 per cent out of which less than 70 per cent is released. But the Awolowo government was allocating over 30 per cent to education,” he said.

The ASUU President criticised many Universities Vice Chancellors for their failure to carry necessary stakeholders along in the utilisation of TETFund allocation to their institutions.

“The TETFund inviting us as stakeholders to this meeting is an example of how it should be.

“But, you remember that when you were allocating money to universities VCs, we agreed that they would call stakeholders meeting before that money is utilised.

“We had our National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting some days ago, less than 10 per cent have called for that stakeholders meeting.

“I want to plead that any university that does not take the stakeholders along, should not be allowed to have access to the fund. The funds belong to the Nigerian people,” he said.