The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has warned that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) could be phased out if the National Assembly passes the proposed tax reform bills introduced by the federal government.
The warning was issued by the Benin Zone Coordinator of ASUU, Professor Monday Igbafen, during a press conference at the University of Benin. He criticized the provision in Section 59(3) of the bill, which stipulates that only 50% of the education development levy would be allocated to TETFund in 2025, while the remaining portion would be shared among the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), and the National Education Loan Fund.
“The consequence of this section is that TETFund’s allocation will be reduced to 66% in 2027, 2028, and 2029, before being completely removed by 2030,” Igbafen stated. “This effectively means that TETFund will cease to exist, and that is unacceptable.”
ASUU emphasized that TETFund was originally conceptualized by the union to address the chronic underfunding of Nigerian universities, playing a key role in the sector’s infrastructural and human capital development.
“Since its formation, TETFund has indisputably remained the cornerstone of the rapid transformation of tertiary institutions in terms of manpower, infrastructure, and academic development,” Igbafen said. “It impacts not only tertiary education but also secondary and kindergarten levels by supporting the production of quality teachers and other academic staff.”
The union described the proposed tax reform as a direct attack on public tertiary education and called on Nigerians to resist it. “We are calling for mass resistance against this potent threat to the lifeline of tertiary education in our country. The impending abrogation of TETFund will take public tertiary education many years backward and undermine the modest gains made in repositioning Nigerian universities for global reckoning and transformative development,” Igbafen warned.
The proposed tax reform has already sparked debate, with concerns that it could weaken the financial sustainability of public universities and increase their reliance on government subventions, which h
