Though federal government has generated over N400billion as education taxes through the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) in the last four years, the fund is not enough to solve problems in the education sector.
Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Professor Mahmood Yakubu said this at the sidelines of an event to appreciate taxpayers in Lagos.
Yakubu said if the entire fund is sunk into three universities, like Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (ABU), University of Ibadan and University of Nsukka it would not make them first generation universities.
Referring to the recently concluded Needs Assessment of Nigerian Universities report, he said “we recently surveyed 61 universities and they have over 1.2million students. Each student requires facilities for teaching or learning, hostel accommodation, water security, healthcare. The challenges are enormous.”
He said TETFund only started solely funding tertiary institutions last year but for a period of 16 years all levels of education were beneficiaries and it did not help that many institutions are now only depending on the fund for capital projects.
“At state level hardly do the proprietors effectively fund their universities for capital. Successive rectors of one institution have written me that in the last five years they have not been given one kobo as capital. So they rely absolutely on this source of intervention which is supposed to be supplementary, it is an intervention. We have not come to solve all the problems in the education sector. ”
Chairman of TETFund board, Dr. Musa Babayo said such huge taxes collection shows that Nigeria’s economy is growing and corporate organisations are doing well.
Babayo said payment of taxes is an important civic responsibility as it gives government additional funding to execute developmental projects.
