As negotiations between the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Federal Government continue to end the six-week strike by university lecturers, the labour union has accused the National Universities Commission of awarding contracts to build hostels in 12 new federal universities worth N1.2billion without following due process.
According to ASUU, the sum of N1.2billion to create 560 bed spaces for university students was exorbitant, as it translates to about N2.143m per bed space and N8.571m per room. This is a hike of more than 400 per cent as the most expensive bed space in a government university, from their random check, is between N200, 000 and N400, 000.
These were part of a press release by the union regarding the progress of their negotiation with the Federal Government team led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, and the chairman of the Implementation Committee of the Needs Assessment Report of Universities, Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State.
In the press release, which was signed by the President of the Union, Dr. Nasir Fagge, ASUU restated the refusal of the Federal Government to honour the agreement made in 2009, to which the government committed itself to providing the sum of N1.5trillion over three years (2009 – 2011) to address the rot and decay in federal universities. However, they said that the period elapsed without any serious effort made on the part of government.
It said that the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the union in which it promised to “stimulate the process of revitalizing the university system with an initial sum of N100billion for 2012 which will be built up to a yearly sum of N400 billion in the next three years (2013 – 2015) as intervention.”
It said that even though the government insisted on setting up a needs assessment committee to ascertain what will be done with the funds, the committee also arrived at N800 billion needed to revitalize the universities, at about N400 billion yearly.
The statement went, “Available information indicates that the Suswam committee was to be used as a smokescreen to deceive ASUU, Nigerian students and parents as well as other unsuspecting members of the public on the purportedly released N100 billion for the implementation of the Needs Assessment Report. First, Government plans to divert the regular yearly allocations to universities by TETFund to make at least 70% of the N100 billion. 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 the TETFund ab initio.
“Again, contrary to subsisting operational procedures, about 75% of monies meant for revitalising universities would not be released to them as the Suswam Committee plans to hand over the construction of the hostel projects to the Federal Ministry of Education and/or the National Universities Commission (NUC) for implementation. This is illegal; neither the Ministry nor NUC is backed by Laws of Nigerian public universities to divert monies meant for the development of these institutions into centrally-executed projects.”
It threatened to discontinue its participation in the negotiations until the Suswam committee gives the Union that it would not serve as another means of recycling and diverting funds meant for schools.
The union also said that the propaganda peddled by the government that the strike was about the earned allowances of the university lecturers as being far from the truth.
Rather, it said that the strike was about making government honour its side of the agreement signed in 2009, which dwelt largely on increasing funding for the universities.