Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige
Nigerian varsities set to receive N30bn revitilisation fund soon, says Minister
Minister of Labour and Employment, Chief Chris Ngige has disclosed that his ministry will soon commence disbursement of the N30 billion Revitalisation Fund to public universities soon.
Ngige said this at the end of a closed-door conciliation meeting between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Friday, October 15, in Abuja.
The meeting was convened by the minister to evaluate the level of implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by both parties in December 2020 and the resolutions of the follow-up meeting, held on August 2.
Ngige said that the meeting held fruitful deliberations and the six issues on the agenda were satisfactorily addressed.
He assured that government was not dragging its feet on anything that would make the university system to be good, adding that it was desirous that public universities should be seen as fit and proper places for learning and research.
The minister reaffirmed the commitment of the government to uplifting the standard of the country’s university system.
”The Buhari administration will try as much as possible within its limited resources, to make a meaningful contribution to the development of the university system,” he said.
On the issue of revitalisation funds for public universities, he noted that the meeting received an update from the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Federal Ministry of Education.
According to him, they are happy that the assignment given to them has been done satisfactorily.
Ngige said that the NUC and the Federal Ministry of Education did their assignment in terms of getting the universities, to come and defend the various allocations given to them based on the needs in the universities.
“A committee to monitor has also been sent up by the NUC. We are happy about that and expect the disbursement of the revitalisation funds to commence very soon,” he added.
Regarding the issue of earned allowances, Ngige said the meeting was equally satisfied; with the work that the NUC had done having compartmentalised the payments based on the universities and the existing unions.
He said N22. 172 billion was provided in the 2021 Supplementary Budget for Earned Allowances to all workers in the universities.
Ngige expressed optimism that the payments to the individual universities would commence very soon, as the meeting had set a timeline for the payment to begin on or before October 30.
