Pro-chancellors Accuse Accountant, Auditor Generals’ Staff of Extortion

•ASUU, NANS reject proposed students’ loan scheme

•Don accuses lawmakers of hijacking commonwealth scholarships

Udora Orizu in Abuja

Pro-chancellors of federal universities have accused staff of the Office of Accountant General of the Federation and those from Auditor General of extorting money from the institutions when they come for inspection of their account books.

The Pro-chancellor of Federal University Lafia and the chairman committee of pro-chancellors of federal universities in Nigeria, Munzalki Jibril, who made the allegation, at the national summit on tertiary education, organised by the House of Representatives in Abuja, yesterday, alleged that the officers negotiate with the institutions as if they were, “buying goats in the market and refuse offers to the tune of N2 million.”

Jibril said the autonomy of the universities was the way out of the current crisis in the university system and tertiary education generally.

He joined other stakeholders in advocating absolute autonomy for tertiary institutions for optimal performance, saying it would give them the opportunity to properly go into partnership for funding of the institutions.

The professor of English said: “We got the autonomy law of 2003, which official name is Universities’ Miscellaneous Provision Amendment Act 2023, which actually gave birth to the universities governance autonomy. That’s why we’re now able to appoint our vice chancellors without reference to the minister or to the President.

“But what remains to be given is the financial autonomy. We are now classified as parastatals of government. That’s why we have the problem with IPPIS. If we were not government parastatals by classification, we wouldn’t have anything to do with IPPIS.

“We wouldn’t have people from the Accountant General’s office come at the end of the year to say they want to inspect the books of the universities or the Auditor General’s office and these are people coming to extort money and they negotiate as if they’re buying goats in the market, if you give them N2 million they leave it and walk away, you have to beg.”

Various panelists had earlier demanded for total autonomy for universities and tertiary institutions, saying absence of it was limiting them from pursuing Public Private Partnership (PPP) for structural and human development.

Vice Chancellor of University of Benin, Lilian Salami,

recalled that there were people who wanted to provide accommodation in her institution, but demanded a duration of 15 years to recoup their funds and the university lacked powers to grant such demand.

Also, the pro-chancellor of the University of Lagos, Lanre Tejuoso, said there was need to change PPP environment. He, however decried lack of absolute autonomy inhibiting the process.

“Without the autonomy of our universities, to have our own banking system that we can control, not the Treasury Single Account (TSA) there is no way we can do PPP successfully.

“The banks too will be interested to fund PPP on infrastructural development if they know they can control the inflow of income for that PPP. So autonomy is the bedrock of how we can make a difference in the PPP collaboration for the transformation of our universities,” he said.

In another panel discussion, Hauwa Imam, the vice president of Commonwealth council for Education Administration and Management, accuses members of the National Assembly of hijacking Commonwealth scholarships for their children and ward.

Imam lamented that children or wards of ordinary Nigerians do not have access to such grants, saying her own son had participated in such exercise came top in the assessment but was denied the opportunity.