Oluwatosin Lamidi
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Sunday said that Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy of the Federal Government has more disadvantages than benefits.
The National President, ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, who made the disclosure on Sunday, said the TSA is now causing underdevelopment of research in Nigerian universities.
According to him, exempting universities from TSA policy, was among demands of the association wrote to Federal Government, before its members embarked on a 7-day warning strike recently.
He listed other demands to include payment of earned academic allowances, effective funding of universities, and an end to payment of fractions of salaries to some institutions, among others.
Ogunyemi warned that ASUU would embark on an indefinite strike after the present warning strike, if FG failed to address major issues and fulfil demands of the association.
He insisted that the initiative had more disadvantages than merits, citing instances where international organisations and corporate bodies used, in financing tertiary education.
‘’We do not condemn the Federal Government’s laudable initiative of introducing the Treasury Single Account because it is a good policy, but its bottlenecks are just too much.
“International and corporate bodies send research grants to universities, which are paid into accounts of the institutions, but they get trapped in centralised TSA accounts that are not accessible’’. Ogunyemi said.
According to him, most of the research funds eventually get forfeited, as a result of an institution’s inability to provide concrete execution plans for feedback to bodies which granted such aids.
Such grants come with timelines and the granting institutions get agitated and start asking questions which we can neither answer nor explain and it often leads to forfeiture.” he said.
