By Ezrel Tabiowo
Abuja
The Senate has unearthed what It called gross mismanagement of the education tax fund, following discoveries which revealed ‘illegal’ diversion of N273 billion from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) under the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The revelation, which came as a rude shock to senators, was contained in the report of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund.
And while adopting the committee’s recommendations, the body gave its nod for the TETFund Act to be amended, in order to accommodate approval of the National Assembly in the process of allocation and disbursement of funds belonging to TETFund.
The Senate also recommended that the appointments of the executive secretary and that of the chairman and members of the Board of Trustees of TETFund, be made by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
In addition, the upper chamber, while insisting on refunds of all monies borrowed from the Education Tax Account, noted that recovered sums could be deployed for the implementation of numerous infrastructural projects yet to be executed across tertiary institutions in the country.
Earlier, Chairman of the committee, Senator Barau Jibrin (APC, Kano North), in his presentation, disclosed that the panel, sequel to investigations, found that “funds which amounted to
N273,931,254,708.51 was not transferred to TETFund project account in 2014, rather it was diverted to finance various expenditures, including the revitalisation of universities’ infrastructure and payment of allowances of Academic Staff of Nigerian Universities during the period under reference on the approval of the former President Goodluck Jonathan.”
According to him, the diversion of funds belonging to TETFund, was made possible due to the loophole in the TETFund Act which allows only the President to be the approving authority without recourse to the National Assembly for approval.
He added that the loophole which was exploited by the previous administration stands in clear violation of Section 82(4) of the Constitution which states that, “no money shall be withdrawn from the consolidated revenue Fund or any public fund of the Federation, except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly.”
Jibrin further disclosed that the recently appointed Executive Secretary of TETFund, Dr. Abdullahi Bafa, revealed to the committee that N10 billion, out of the diverted N273 billion, was given as loan to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), a sum recently refunded to TETFund, and leaving a balance of N263.9 billion yet to be refunded by the federal government.
The Senate committee in its report, also found that the Fund did not receive or spend N1 trillion on infrastructure in tertiary institutions, as stated by the previous administration between 2011 and 2015, but that the actual amount collected was penned at N507 billion only.
In his contribution, the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Ali Ndume, said: “What this report brings out is the role of the National Assembly in the appropriation of funds. It also underscores the importance of oversight function. If the Executive Secretary is given the latitude to do what he likes, then what we will see is this type of mismanagement.”
