Public and private tertiary education institutions are at loggerheads over a proposal to widen access to the country’s Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to include private institutions. The fund is currently responsible for managing and disbursing the education tax to public tertiary institutions.

According to informed sources, some key members of the National Assembly have been successfully lobbied by private universities to ensure that TETFund law is amended to accommodate tertiary institutions. Thus two separate bills proposing the amendments have scaled through the first and second readings. 

These bills seek to ensure that the TETFund allocates to private universities about 10% of the 2% of all company taxes collected; and 17.5% of the taxes for federal tertiary health institutions and teaching hospitals in the country.

However, controversy over the plans has prompted the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education – which continues to receive memoranda from both sides – to schedule another public hearing on the complex issue. There have been four attempts in the last five years to amend the laws relating to the fund.

In a rare show of solidarity, during the first public hearing, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Committee of Vice-Chancellors (CVC), and the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the head of TETFund rejected moves by private tertiary institutions to become integral beneficiaries of the fund. 

Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, national president of ASUU, questioned the philosophical basis for the amendments. 

“Allowing private universities to benefit from TETFund would violate the essence of the establishment of the fund, which is to get private sector to contribute to funding education through an education tax. How can we deploy public funds to support private investment? They are charging fees and making profits but want to draw from public funds. This is unacceptable,” he said. 

“Forty out of 70 private universities, representing about 54% of private universities, are faith-based; encouraging them to draw from TETFund in a country that is sensitive about religions would open another window of national crisis,” he warned.

In a brief submission to the National Assembly, representatives of TETFund, CVC and NUC supported the views of Ogunyemi. 

TETFund was born as an “intervention measure” in January 1993 when the Education Tax Act was passed alongside other education-related legislation, imposing a 2% tax on the assessable profits of all companies in Nigeria. This was seen as a home-grown solution to deal with funding to rehabilitate ageing infrastructure, restore education confidence, and build the capacity of teachers and lecturers, among other priorities. 

When the original law was replaced by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act in 2011, public institutions faced numerous challenges while private universities were yet to take off. 

With private universities having mushroomed over the past decade, plans to change the legislation to include them in future funding runs have divided academics in the country. 

Speaking on behalf of private universities, Professor Samuel Ibiyemi, vice-chancellor of Achievers University, Owo, Ondo State, said the non-inclusion of private universities as legitimate beneficiaries of TETFund was unfair. Ibiyemi said research efforts undertaken by private universities in the fight against Ebola and Lassa fever with funding from the World Bank showed they should be supported. “Imagine how many such rescues Nigeria would have enjoyed if access to the TETFund research was liberalised,” he said. 

Another advocate of government support for private universities, Professor Peter Okebukola, former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, recently told Nigerian Tribune, that the National Assembly should amend the law to accommodate the legitimate demands of private universities. “TETFund should make provision for private universities. The question is, where do we think the money from TETFund is coming from? It is not from the public but private”.

Opposing the move, Dr Richard Almond of the economics department at the University of Port Harcourt, said since the private sector is the main contributor to the fund, it cannot ask for help from the same fund. “Private universities should organise their own TETFund to satisfy the aims and objective of their universities,” he said. 

“We should not look too far. Most of the private universities are owned by the members of Nigeria’s ruling elite. Charity begins at home. They should form a club to come to the aid of private tertiary institutions,” said Professor Ambrose Richard from the geography department at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. 

Professor Abdullahi Ahmed, from the political science department at the University of Maiduguri, said: “Asking for taxpayers to sustain private universities is an anomaly. This request should be rejected."

This was also the view of Dr Abang Basset, sociology department at the University of Uyo. “How can money meant for public utilities be extended to private interest? No theory of private enterprises supports this position. Rather, the reverse is the case.”

Professor Adekunle Oyasanmi of the geography department at Ekiti State University, said the idea of public-private partnership defeats the idea of amending the TETFund in order to allow private universities as beneficiaries. “This is not acceptable.”