Governance, transparency portal to strengthen accountability in federal tertiary institutions – Alausa
…says we are engaging all unions
Tunji Alausa, minister of education said the federal government on Tuesday launched federal tertiary institution governance and transparency dashboard, to strengthen transparency and accountability.
The dashboard is expected to serve public tertiary institutions, universities, polytechnics, colleges of education receiving almost 100% federal government funding, to hold them accountable.
This is just as he assured that the President Tinubu’s administration is currently engaging all unions in federal tertiary institutions to end era of strikes. He disclosed this while speaking with State House journalists after meeting with the President at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He said, “This is what this government is all about. Government of President Bola Tinubu is about deepening the governance and transparency, transparency process in our country, and in the past 26 months, you’ve seen that played out.
“I can continue to tell you what the President has done over and over in terms of the significant, massive progress that we’ve made.
“We started with the federal tertiary institutions. We’re going to move it to all tertiary institutions in the country, state universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, as well as private universities, private polytechnics and private colleges of education.
“We will enforce the reporting requirement using our regulatory bodies; NUC, National Board for Technical Education, as well as National Council for National Commission of Colleges of Education.
“The other thing we did today beyond launching the transparency portal, it’s also to continue our agenda to enhancing and deepening governance in our tertiary institutions.”
He disclosed that the Ministry also invited Adebowale Adeokun, the director general of Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), to meet with all the heads of our tertiary institution to clearly lay down the requirements of BPP in ensuring they comply fully, efficiently and effectively with our public procurement rules.
“That’s deepening our governance and transparency processes.”
Speaking on the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, he said the “President has mandated us that he doesn’t want ASUU to go on strike, and we’re doing everything humanly possible to ensure that our students stay in school.”
He noted that the last strike they went on for about 6 days was not really needed, adding that “We’re talking to them.”
“We’ve met literally all their requirements. Now we’ve gone back to the negotiation table. We’re talking as we spoke to the leadership this morning. We will resolve this. And part of my visit today here is to also explain where we are with the ASUU strike to Mr. President and to extract more concession from Mr. President. In the education sector, we’re taking advantage of Mr. President because of his love, his fervent and benevolent love for education and human capital.
“And when you talk about human capital, you’re talking about health, education and social protection.
“Beyond what our president is doing in expanding, creating opportunities across the country, building economy. We’ve seen what’s happening with fuel subsidy, foreign exchange arbitrage is gone. Extensive infrastructure projects going across the country. We have new tax bill. Our GDP is growing the last quarter. GDP is at 4.23%. Nigeria is back to governments.”
He explained that the problem in the past was that the Ministry of Education, created the problem by meeting separately with all the unions.
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“We had one negotiating committee dealing with universities, ASUU. We had another one dealing with Polytechnics, ASUP, and we had another one dealing with colleges of education COHESU, and they’re not talking to one another.
“What we’ve done now is to expand one single committee called Alhaji Yayale Ahmed federal government, negotiating committee with tertiary institutions.
“They’re dealing with both academic and non-academic unions. As I’m talking to you. They’re talking to polytechnics, the same committee is talking to the polytechnics, talking to the Colleges of Education, as well as ASUU, both academic and non academic union. And with all due respect, there is no ultimatum.
“I still spoke to the president of ASUP yesterday. I’m on first line call to them. Everything is calm, and they all understand this is a listening government. We would resolve all their problems, resolve significant part of their problems,” he added.
