Buhari: Dwindling Resources Affecting Govt’s Funding of Education 

* Charges academic unions to challenge corruption in higher institutions 

Deji Elumoye and Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja 

President Muhammadu Buhari has declared that the nation’s dwindling resources has made it impossible for only government to fund education in the country.

Speaking Tuesday at the Fourth National Summit on Diminishing Corruption in the Public Sector, held at the Conference Hall of the State House in Abuja, the president assured Nigerians that the federal government would continue to fund the education sector within available resources.

His words: “Due to declining resources, government cannot bear the cost of funding education alone. I task our academics to attract endowments, research and other grants to universities, polytechnics and colleges of education similar to what obtains in other countries.

“Government will continue to fund education within realistically available revenue, but stakeholders, including the media, should equally advocate for transparency in the amount generated as internally generated revenue by educational institutions and how such funds are expended.”

President Buhari also charged stakeholders in the education sector to do more to attract other sources of funding for the education sector.

According to him, stakeholders and the academic unions should demand accountability and interrogate the bloated expenditures of their institutions.

Buhari also noted that corruption in the way tertiary institutions spend their internally generated revenues has not gone without due focus and attention by stakeholders, including the unions.

He also charged the unions to work with government in the effort to end payroll fraud, by paying attention to and querying the authenticity of the payrolls in their various institutions.

He said: “Corruption in the expenditure of internally generated revenue of tertiary institutions is a matter that has strangely not received the attention of stakeholders in tertiary education, including unions.

“I call on stakeholders to demand accountability in the administration of academic institutions and for unions to interrogate the bloated personnel and recurrent expenditure of their institutions. Let me also implore the unions to work with government to put faces and identities to names on the payroll.”

Details later…