TheCable

The Treasury Single Account (TSA), introduced by the federal government to check corruption, is stalling research in the universities, according to the Academic Union of Universities (ASUU).

Exempting the universities from the TSA is among the demands of ASUU, whose members embarked on a one-week warning strike on Wednesday.

According to Biodun Ogunyemi, its national president, other demands include the payment of earned academic allowances, effective funding of the universities, and an end to the payment of fractions of salaries to some institutions.

Ogunyemi said if the demands were not met, the union would have no other choice but to embark on an indefinite strike.

Speaking specifically on the TSA, Christopher Piwuna, chairman, Jos chapter of the union, told NAN that the policy was of utmost concern to the universities because it was impeding their core mandate – research and breakthroughs.

“The TSA is a good policy, but its bottlenecks are too much,” Piwuna said.

“International and corporate bodies send research grants to universities, which are paid into the accounts of the institutions, but they get trapped in centralised TSA accounts that are not accessible.

“Such grants come with timelines and the granting institutions get agitated and start asking questions which we can neither answer nor explain. Often, this leads to forfeiture” .

He regretted that the development had led to the loss of many research opportunities and possible breakthroughs, adding that it had also ruptured the confidence between the angry granting institutions and the “helpless” supposed recipients.

“ASUU has nothing against the TSA, we are only saying that the universities should be exempted from it in view of the speed with which universities’ activities are carried out and also because lots of funds paid into the schools’ accounts come in from foreign sources,” he explained.

Piwuna admitted, however, that the TSA policy had checked a lot of excesses in the system and should be sustained.

“Some institutions have been found to have up to 25 accounts, some of which are not even known to their chief executive officers,” he said.

“Obviously, such accounts were opened by corrupt elements to steal funds; it is a good thing that the TSA has stemmed such recklessness.”

He explained that the warning strike was aimed at forcing government to revitalise the public universities “especially in view of the economic recession that has made it difficult for people to send their children to private universities”.