The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has asked the Federal Government to separate the budget of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, from the education annual budget, saying such a step would enable effective budget implementation.
ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this at the TETFund Alliance for Innovative Research, TETFAIR, Showcase, and Closing Event in Abuja yesterday.
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Osodeke, who spoke against the backdrop of suspicion that the national education budget may not enjoy 100 percent implementation, observed that strangely, for the first time, government decided to add TETFund’s budget to the education budget.
The ASUU president added that once TETFund’s budget was included in the national budget, “it is finished.”
He also called on Nigerians to deal with the inferiority complex, which allows them to depend on services abroad, stating that every country in the world that wants to develop must use its ideas and its people, and those ideas are in the universities.
Osodeke decried the continuous patronage of foreign goods and services by Nigerians, even when they can be sourced locally.
He said, “In 2020, we were challenged to produce something better than IPPIS; it took us two months to produce it, UTA, which we have presented to the National Assembly and to the House. Then we said, Let’s test the twin, and IPPIS came last, but Nigeria insisted on using IPPIS.