The federal government Thursday distributed N100 billion to 59 public universities as its first intervention fund for the provision of critical infrastructure in the institutions. It also appealed to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to call off its strike and allow resumption of activities in the ivory towers. But its plea may have not swayed the union, which Thursday announced that it was withdrawing from further negotiations with the federal government, which it accused of insincerity. In a bid to ensure equity and national spread in the distribution of the money, each of the 36 states of the federation would have one university covered in the first phase of the intervention programme. The funds would be deployed to building new hostels, renovation of old ones, provision of libraries, laboratories, lecture rooms and theatres and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities, among others. Chairman of the Presidential Implementation and Monitoring Committee on the Needs Assessment in Nigerian Universities and Benue State Governor, Mr. Gabriel Suswam, announced the distribution of the funds at a news conference yesterday in Abuja, called to brief the public on the outcome of the committee’s meeting. The meeting was attended by the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruquayatu Rufa’i and her counterpart in the Ministry of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, representatives of both the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Education, representatives of federal agencies involved in funding university education and the various workers’ unions in the university system. A statement from Suswam’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Dr Cletus Akwaya, said the meeting unanimously adopted a report of its technical sub-committee, which had earlier carried out the distribution of the funds to each of the beneficiary universities based on a criterion adopted from the Needs Assessment report. Suswam explained that the benefitting universities have been charged to use their share of the N100 billion to address the gross deficit in critical infrastructure on their respective campuses. He also said the distribution of the funds was done in a fair and equitable manner based on a properly defined criteria, adding that a representative of ASUU participated in the technical sub- committee that made recommendations to the main committee. “Our committee will present the spreadsheet of the projects to Mr President for his approval after which the funds would be released to the governing councils of the benefitting universities after meeting with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Minister of Education,” he said. Suswam renewed his appeal to ASUU to call off the ongoing strike in the interest of the nation. According to him, most of the issues that gave rise to the industrial action have been substantially addressed by the federal government. He specifically referred to the contentious issue of the earned allowances for which the federal government has approved N30 billion for immediate release to the universities to enable them pay their staff members after due verification of the various claims of their workers. However,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.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 05:41:30 +0000