While it recognized that the Federal Government adopted the Treasury Single Account to ensure transparency and elimination of waste of public funds, ASUU said the initiative has become an impediment to smooth functioning of the universities.

According to him, TSA has made it difficult for Federal Universities to discharge their core responsibilities of teaching, research, and community services as well as engaging in international academic networking due to inadequate access to budgeted funds.

The Union added that the implementation of TSA has also made it impossible for universities to buy equipment and consumables. “It may also interest Nigerians to know that on account of TSA, Federal Universities have experienced shortfalls in their personnel costs in the months of December 2015 and January 2016 and this has caused serious delays in the payment of salaries for the same period, causing suffering for the families of workers who had earned their pay through work,” ASUU said while affirming its rejection of inclusion of the university system in the TSA initiative.

 “TSA is incompatible with the autonomy of universities and our Union calls on the Federal Government to exempt the universities from its implementation on account of the peculiarities of the institutions,” said Dr. Isa Fagge.

Also, the Union said it is concerned about the recent removal of 12 VCs of the new universities and immediate appointment of new VCs to replace them because of its implications for due process, university growth, development and autonomy.

According to ASUU, this is because going by the University Miscellaneous (Amendment) Act 2003, only the Governing Councils are empowered to appoint and remove VCs.  But the Union said the 12 universities have been operating illegally all along as the Jonathan administration which established them did not gazette the laws with which they were established. ASUU therefore advised the Federal Government to toe the path of legality by gazetting the law appointing the Councils and mandating the Councils to commence the process of appointing new VCs for the affected universities.

But the Union said the controversies surrounding the removal of the Vice Chancellor of the National Open Universities of Nigeria were unnecessary as he had completed his statutorily allowed tenure.

ASUU also decried the current economic crises being experienced by the country which it attributed to the failure of successive Nigerian government since 1960 to uphold the economic objectives of the Nigerian state as enshrined in the constitution and surrendering of the nation’s economy to the Bretton Woods’ institutions and privatization of the commanding heights of the nation’s economy.

The Union therefore asked for a re-examination of the privatization of the commanding heights of the economy by setting up a panel of patriotic citizens to re-examine all the privatizations done under the Obasanjo regime.

ASUU also gave its support to the mass protest against the hike in electricity tariffs by labour movements and civil society organizations. The Union said if allowed to stay, the new electricity tariff will worsen the living condition of Nigerians.

In its review of the 2016 budget proposal now before the National Assembly, ASUU warned that the spending plans may return Nigeria to the debt trap with the plans of government to borrow to fund the budget. Instead of borrowing, the Union advised that the N2.2 trillion recovered from the TSA and whatever else is recovered from looters should be ploughed in to finance the 2016 budget.