ASUU enjoins Tinubu to create alternative means to fund NELFUND

Abdullateef Fowewe

The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Emmanuel Osedeke has urged  President Bola Tinubu to develop an alternative means of funding the Nigerian Education Loan Fund.

In an interview with Channels Television on Thursday, he advised the government to consider maximising the Value Added Tax as a means to fund the ideology of NELFUND, while allowing the Education Act of 1992/93 to stay.

He said, “Let that Act that was initiated in 1992/93, that has transformed all Nigerian universities allow it to stay.

“Go and look for ways. If you want to fund NELFUND, go and look for ways to fund it, don’t go and take from the one that has already been there to fund it. And like I said, when Ghana came to Nigeria and looked at what we were doing, they went back and said, we won’t take it from tax, let’s take it from VAT.

“VAT is for all Nigerians, State, Federal and Local Government, let Federal Government say, we want to fund NELFUND from VAT, let them take one or percent from VAT and use it to fund NELFUND, that way everybody would have contributed, State, Federal, Local.

“If you take one or two percent of VAT that you see today to fund NELFUND, you would have solved that problem.”