The Federal Government has thrown its weight behind a planned probe by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, into allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement involving Vice Chancellors of public universities.
The union said it would soon begin scrutinising how funds from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund and the Nigeria Education Fund, NELFUND, were being utilised across universities, amid concerns that some heads of institutions have been diverting or improperly managing allocations meant for development projects and students’ loans.
ASUU President, Professor Chris Piwuna, raised the concerns on Wednesday during the public presentation of 72 academic textbooks in Abuja.
Piwuna said the union has concluded plans to scrutinise Vice Chancellors across public universities and demand proper accounts of the utilisation of funds, especially TETFund interventions.
Professor Piwuna alleged that many Vice Chancellors treated TETFund disbursements as routine annual allocations that could be used at their discretion.
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He said there is plenty of money being given to the universities in recent years, sadly, many of them have not utilised it effectively, while some of them have mismanaged it, and others have used them for different purposes than what they were meant for.
Piwuna alleged that the Vice Chancellors come back because they know that TETFUND will make another disbursement to the institutions the following year.
He requested the support of the Federal Government to turn its searchlights on the Vice Chancellors and the universities’ management.
For his part, the Education Minister, Tunji Alausa, supported the union’s plan to scrutinise the activities of university heads, particularly regarding the management of TETFund interventions and NELFund Disbursements.
The Minister said many heads of tertiary institutions were running their schools like personal empires and called for greater accountability in the use of public funds.
Alausa insists that every single naira that is deployed to those institutions should be used the way they are meant to be used, promising to work with ASUU to ensure that that’s being done.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
