The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has said that until the Governor Gabriel Suswan Needs Assessment Committee gives it a guarantee that it will not use other channels to recycle the TETFUND money as well as funds meant for universities, the union will see no need to continue to participate in the deliberation.
This was just as the federal government assured that the N100 billion to 61 universities would be shared equitably as part of its commitment to end the strike embarked upon by ASUU.
Briefing the press, yesterday, in Lagos, the National President of ASUU, Nasir Isa Fagge said, “Available information indicates that the Suswam Committee was to be used as smokescreen to deceive ASUU, Nigerian students and their parents as well as other unsuspecting members of the public on the purported released of N100 billion for the implementation of the needs assessment report.
“This is unacceptable to ASUU; it is like robbing Peter to pay Paul, since the idea of ‘revitalisation’ took full cognisance of the intervention role of TETFUND ab initio”.
ASUU insisted that it would not call off the strike until Federal Government respected the 2009 agreement and said that about 75 per cent of monies meant for revitalising universities should be released directly to them as Suswam committee plans to hand over the construction of the hostel projects to the Federal Ministry of Education or NUC.
Fagge said it is illegal, and said that neither the ministry nor NUC was backed by laws of Nigerian public universities to divert monies meant for the development of institutions into centrally-executed projects.
ASUU maintained that NUC has been acting contrary to its statutory function as a regulatory agency, transmitting itself to a tenders’ board which awarded contracts for the construction of 560 bed spaces hostel for each university at a whopping sum of N1.2 billion.
“This contract sum translates into N2.143 million per bed space and N8.571 million per room. We foresee more of such scandalous contracts with the new students’ hostel project being planned by the Suswan committee.
The chairman of the NEEDS Assessment committee, Governor Gabriel Suswam has said that with the seriousness being exhibited by the government, he expected ASUU to call off the strike immediately.
Suswam spoke after a meeting of the subcommittee on NEEDS assessment at the Benue state Governor’s Lodge in Abuja.
Though ASUU was not present at yesterday’s meeting, the other university unions were represented.
He said that the minister of education and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) would be meeting with the universities’ councils today and would release the N30 billion promised by the government to address the issue of earned allowance.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”forumad”]
– See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/230813/asuu-threatens-discontinue-talks-fg#sthash.mCii2Pux.dpuf
