The Senior Staff Union in College of Education, Nigeria (SSUCOEN) has called on the government to reverse it’s decisions on implementation of 40 per cent automatic deduction from institutions IGR.
The National President, SSUCOEN, Danladi Msheliza, made this known in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday.
The Accountant-General of the Federation had sent a memo to all Federal Colleges of Education, titled “Implementation of 40 per cent Automatic Deduction from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Partially Funded Federal Government Institutions”.
The memo sated that the Honourable Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy has approved the implementation of a 40 per cent auto deduction from the gross Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of all Partially Funded Federal Government Institutions.
The memo further stated that “All statutory revenue lines like Tender Fees, Contractor’s Registration Fees, Disposal of Fixed Assets, Rent on Quarters, e.t.c. shall be remitted 100 per cent to the Sub-recurrent Account.
Msheliza said that education should not be “partially funded” but rather should be “fully funded” by the federal government, which established them.
“In spite of progressively vanishing support from the federal government that set them up, Colleges have managed to survive and live up to the demands of their mandate of training teachers for this country.
” This is by devising several means, including denying staff and students of most of their entitlements to survive and operating under excruciating teaching and learning environment.
“Tertiary education is now rightly not for the poor. When government is supposed to give life support to our Colleges, they rather prefer to milk and draw the last blood of life, out of us.
“All the adjustments in the revenue will now pass unto the parents because students have to be charged the 40 per cent to each subhead as IGR to government. Otherwise, no College of education in Nigeria can survive.
“For the records, Colleges of Education do not have anything called IGR. What students pay (as paltry sums) are service charge for students ID card, hostel maintenance, games, etc.,” he said.
He, therefore, appealed that the decision should be reversed to allow the children of the poor to go to school like the children of the elites.
He added that if this was not done, Colleges of Education would no longer train teachers for Nigerian schools and the union may also have no option than to downtool and further mobilise students across all Colleges of Education for protest.
