Abubakar Hassan Fulata, the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on University Education, has refuted claims that members sought bribes of ₦480 million in order to approve the 2025 budget’s allocation for a number of federal universities and other postsecondary institutions.
According to him, the objective of individuals disseminating these reports is to sabotage the parliamentarians’ work.
The budget defense, which was held in the House temporary chamber, was accessible to the public and media, Fulata argued in defense of the parliamentarians, because there was neither an executive session nor a private meeting.
The National Assembly’s legislators allegedly organized a bribery scheme that targeted federal colleges and other higher education institutions around the nation, according to a report published by an online news outlet.
The allegation claims that university heads are being threatened and intimidated by lawmakers to pay ₦8 million each in order to approve their budgetary allocations for 2025.
Senate and House of Representatives lawmakers are allegedly involved in the extortion scam.
The Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund and the House Committee on University Education are alleged to have been used by the parliamentarians to demand funding from universities in order to approve their budgets.
But Fulata rejected the allegations completely.
By offering suggestions on how colleges should behave, he contended that politicians have been at the vanguard of making life easier for them.
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The vice-chancellor of Federal University Gusau, Zamfara State, prevented the lawmakers from entering the institution and neglected to produce documents pertaining to the budget performance of the previous years (2022 to 2024) and the 2025 budget proposal, he continued, adding that lawmakers in the Green Chamber conducted oversight visits to all federal universities under his committee’s supervision.
According to him, President Bola Tinubu agreed to remove universities and other tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) because of the legislators’ opposition to its inclusion, arguing that it is “anti-intellectual, anti-academics, and retrogressive.”
According to him, the House of Representatives considered and passed a motion urging Mr. President to form the councils because universities and other tertiary institutions lacked councils almost a year after the current government took office. The President responded to the motion almost immediately.
He clarified that the House Committee on University Education conducted an oversight visit to all federal universities under its purview in 2024, with the exception of Federal University Gusau in Zamfara State, whose vice chancellor not only denied lawmakers access to the institution but also neglected to produce documentation pertaining to the budget performance of the previous years (2022–2024) and the budget proposal for 2025. The supervision visit, he explained, was intended to provide a better understanding of the universities’ issues and successes.
The administration of nearly every university he visited, he claimed, had major complaints about the increase in electricity rates.
Some universities were paying monthly electricity tariffs of around N100 million, and we believed that this was not beneficial for our postsecondary institutions. The House passed a resolution after I made a motion on the matter, calling for a review of the electricity tariff to be lowered or for these institutions to be removed from the Band A group of utilities.
Fulata stated that the president had once more heard our plea and granted a 50% electricity tariff subsidy for schools of education, universities, polytechnics, all tertiary institutions, and hospitals.
Immediately before the Armed Forces Remembrance Day ceremony on January 15, 2025, he claimed, the National Universities Commission and university vice chancellors had an open meeting to discuss the committee’s budget defense.