The Academic Staff Union of Universities on Monday revealed that the Federal Government owed universities N660bn arising from the Needs Assessment Intervention Fund.
The Coordinator of the union, Ibadan zone, Prof Segun Ajiboye, made this known in an interview with our correspondent on Monday.
According to him, the money is part of the unpaid intervention fund for 2014, 2015 and 2016.
He added that the sum was part of the N1.3tn intervention agreement the union reached with the Federal Government in 2013.
In line with the pact, Ajiboye, who is the UI-ASUU Chairman, noted that the Federal Government agreed to pay N220bn annually to improve on the needs of the nation’s universities.
X-raying the 2016 budget, in which the education sector received N369.6bn, Ajiboye said that President Muhammadu Buhari did not capture in it how his administration would fulfil the agreements the FG signed with the union.
Ajiboye said, “When you consider the agreed intervention fund in 2013, it was N1.3tn, but has the Federal Government kept to that promise? It only released N200bn in 2013 after the six months strike and since then nothing has been injected into the system.
“Unfortunately, it is the same government agents that will be saying Nigerian universities are lowly ranked globally without doing the needful to make the universities meet global standard. This involves injecting enough funds into the tertiary education system. If the funds are released, our universities will be able to compete when the necessary infrastructure is in place.”
Besides, the government, the don said, owed academic staff in the public universities more than N200bn arrears of earned allowances for the 2014 and 2015 academic sessions.
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