President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has knocked governors for setting up state universities without enough funds for their sustainability.
He added that most governors establish universities in their states to get a share of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund.
Osodeke, who made the allegations in a recent interview on Channels Television’s ”The Morning Brief”.
His words: “Any governor today establishing a university is eyeing TETFund as a source of funding.”
“TETFund was created as an intervention fund, not the major funding. The universities belong to the federal government and government is supposed to fund them and states are supposed to fund their own.
“It’s an intervention fund but there are people who want to have access to that money from the political circle, from the bureaucratic circle, at all cost. We are struggling with that,” he said.
The ASUU president said a structure should be created to carry stakeholders along in the process of how the money was allocated and spent in an open and transparent manner.
“There should be stakeholders’ meeting to assess what you want to do with the funds,” Prof Osodeke said.
He added that the stakeholders should include the university community; lecturers, student groups to put an end “to the case you see today where somebody comes from the TETFund and say, ‘I have a project for you and I am going to be the contractor. We want an open project.
“Every university council should be allowed to run its projects with the stakeholders’ involvement.”
