Funding Varsity: We relieves LG's because its not their responsibility - Badaru

Jigawa State Gov Muhd Badaru

By Muhammad Salisu

Following the presentation of an executive bill to Jigawa State House of Assembly, seeking to review the joint funding system of Sule Lamido University, Kafin-Hausa, which generate controversy among people in the state, Governor Muhammad Badaru Abubakar says the state government would continue to fund the university.

The Jigawa State Governor reaffirmed that," It's not a responsibility of local governments to be funding the University."

The Governor while interacting with newsmen in his office at the Jigawa State Government House, Dutse, the state capital explained that, the law that necessitated local government to fund the university is unfair.

"We are trying to change the law which I inherited from the past administration so that, we can relieve our local governments from funding the University because it's not their task and more especially considering the situation on ground that, the local governments can't give their contribution as they can't even pay the monthly salaries of their staff without our intervention," the governor highlighted

Governor Badaru who therefore assured to continue funding the state owned University also stressed that, it has been a responsibility of every state government to fully fund higher institutions and not the local government.

However, the governor noted that, the immediate past administration in the state had awarded the contract of building of the university at a cost of N7 billion and only paid N3 billion then.

He added that, his administration had continue to fund the university as so far about N5 billion has been spent towards completing the work already started”

On the intervention project in the University, the governor pointed that, “I personally requested for more funding from the government in the federation through Tetfund special intervention program as we benefitted with some projects that gulped over N3 billion in the university.”

It could be recalled that, the Jigawa State House of Assembly handed over the matter on the bill to it's committee on education for scrutiny as it has been given 2 week to submit it's report to the Assembly for next action.