The Academic Staff Union of Colleges of Agriculture (ASUCA) has called on the federal government to reinstate colleges of agriculture into the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).
The Union lamented that the schools do not have any source of funding to teach students effectively.
Speaking during a press conference in Abuja yesterday, the national president of ASUCA, Dr. Peter M. Aboki, said that the situation has led to infrastructural decay and dearth of training facilities in the colleges.
“Despite the strategic position of agriculture in the country, COAS and related institutions do not have any form of funding unlike the Universities, Colleges of Education, and Polytechnics who have their funding through Tetfund.
“Several efforts made to reinstate the colleges back into Tetfund for full intervention have been frustrated with five bills sponsored both in the National Assembly collapsing at the committee levels,” he said.
He noted that the Colleges have been denied Tetfund intervention despite being tertiary institutions regulated by NBTE and running ND and HND programmes as the polytechnics.
He said the paltry 5-10 million naira that was given to the COAS was stopped in 2011 when they were finally delisted from Tetfund.
“This is quite pathetic,” he said adding that graduating a student with a National Diploma or Higher National Diploma in the Animal Science Department that has not seen a milking machine or a bulldozer.
“Think of a student with National Diploma in Agricultural Technology or Agricultural Engineering that cannot differentiate a plough from a harrow or ridger, talk more of a combined harvester. These are the situations in our colleges today,” he said.
While stating that the establishment of the Agricultural Development Trust Fund was to fund the colleges, he expressed concerns about those to be appointed to manage the funds, saying they must be people of proven integrity with passion for agricultural progress.
