From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The recent government policy that mandates that partially funded institutions, including Colleges of Education, pay forty percent of their internally generated revenue (IGR) to the treasury has been met with opposition by the national leadership of the Senior Staff Union in College of Education, Nigeria (SSUCOEN).
The federal government said last week that federal colleges and other partially supported institutions will start to automatically subtract 40% of their internally generated revenues.
The government claims that the policy is compliant with a finance circular dated December 20, 2021, and bearing reference number FMFBNP/OTHERS/IGR/CRF/12/2021.
In a statement on Tuesday, SSUCOEN said that the policy was completely nonsensical, arguing that Education should be fully funded by the government, which established them rather than partially.
The Union lamented that in spite of progressively vanishing support from the federal government that set them up, Colleges have managed to survive and live up to the demands of their mandate of training teachers for the country, by devising several means, including denying staff and students of most of their entitlements to survive and operating under excruciating teaching and learning environment.
SSUCOEN asked the Government to immediately reverse what it the policy and “allow the children of the poor to breathe and go to school like the children of the elites”
“If this is not done, Colleges of Education can no longer train teachers for Nigerian Schools. Additionally, the Union may have no option than to downtool and further mobilise students across all Colleges of Education in Nigeria to go to the streets and react to this anti masses policies.” SSUCOEN threatened.
In the statement which was signed by its President, Danladi Msheliza, the Union said the government’s action, could be likened to squeezing water out of stone and depositing it into an ocean, adding that it was a deliberate effort to systematically phase out Public Tertiary Educational Institutions in Nigeria just like they did to public Primary and Secondary Schools.
“Tertiary Education is now rightly not for the poor. When the government is supposed to give life support to our Colleges, they rather prefer to milk and draw the last blood of life out of us.” It stated .
SSUCOEN noted that all the Adjustments in the revenue will now pass unto the parents because students have to be charged the 40% to each subhead as IGR to the government in order for colleges of education in Nigeria to survive.
“For the record, Colleges of Education do not have anything called IGR. What students pay (as paltry sums) are service charge for students ID card, hostel maintenance, games, etc.
“It is unbelievable and mind blogging to note that the federal government wants Colleges of Education who are barely struggling to survive, and whose overhead cannot even pay for diesel or electricity bills, not to talk of students hostels and other logistics, would be asked to remit 40% of what they collect as registration fee from students as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to the federal government coffers to fund political elites’ indulgences.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is really having a ball at the expense of the rest of Nigerians. He has become so comfortable in his presidential villa that he now wants to deny the children of the masses access to quality Education.
“This is a cruel suffocation of federal Colleges of Education that are barely hanging on! It betrays not just a profound poverty of imagination but a studied design to snuff out the last evidence of life in our Colleges. Since children of the elite no longer attend public tertiary Institutions in Nigeria, it’s easy to see why the government wants to kill them by surreptitious actions.
“While our political elites and their families are living luxurious life, with their children either schooling in private institutions or abroad, they want to totally enslave the children of the indigents by denying them access to Education.
“It’s a continuation of the conservative, right-wing, anti-people, neoliberal orthodoxy that is obviously the governing philosophy of the Tinubu administration. It’s probably also a pre-emptive move against legitimate demands for the funding of federal Colleges since the administration has said it has now saved trillions of naira from the removal of petroleum subsidies.” It stated.