A former member of the Governing Council of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Dr. Muhammad Saminu Dagari, has given the Federal Ministry of Education, the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) and the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) hard knocks, accusing them of doing nothing to fight corruption in universities.
In a Press Statement made available to The Lagos Times, Dr. Dagari, who was a nominee of the Federal Government while serving on UNILAG Governing Council, further accused the Federal Ministry of Education, NUC and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) of actually aiding stealing of meagre allocation to Education in the National Budget.
In the statement, entitled “CORRUPTION: University of Lagos is a case in point”, the university don who is with the Federal University, Gashua alleged that: “(i)From January to September, 2019, Government released a sum of N7,530,428,535.69 for payment of salaries via the GIFMIS Platform. Out of this, only N4,339,000,277.09 was utilised. The surplus of N3,191,428,258.60 was stolen.
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“(ii) The Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) was terribly basterdised. From January to September, 2019, the amount realised from students registration fees (Undergraduate & Postgraduate) was N2,579,901,000. The Bursar dubiously reported to Council & the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, N410,679,250 as the amount collected as students registration fees. A sum of N2,169,221,750 was stolen.
“The Minister & the Perm Sec of the Ministry of Education as well as the Accountant General of the Federation are fully aware of this scandal. Yet, nothing was done to UNILAG Management.
“(iii) Anybody who has been to UNILAG recently might have seen an abandoned Library project awarded at a cost of N2,000,000,000 (2 billion Naira).
“This is the Government, ASUU is fighting over funding and improved conditions of service,forgetting that they’ve a bigger fight at their various campuses.
“Why is Government reluctant to release White Paper on the reports of the Visitation Panels to Federal Universities? Of course, it is because of the scandals contained in the various reports.
“One of the things I discovered as a Council member of the University of Lagos is that the greatest enemy of this country is the 2007 Public Procurement Act.
“It is more destructive to the country than corruption. The Act was designed with so many loopholes to allow corrupt public officials to loot the nation’s resources. Unless this useless Act is repealed, no Government can checkmate looting of public funds.
“As for the current ASUU strike, even if Government concedes to all demands of ASUU, it’s only a temporal solution. There’ll be another round of strikes, if the monster is not eventually killed.
“For an interim solution to the current impasse, both Government and ASUU must shift grounds.”
