FG deposits N200bn varsity infrastructure fund in CBN

The Federal Government said it has deposited the N200bn promised as funding to universities into an account with the Central Bank of Nigeria. The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, and the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Julius Okojie, confirmed this on Tuesday. The amount is meant for the renewal of infrastructure in public universities in the country. Okupe, who featured on Channels Television programme ‘Sunrise Daily’, said from the government’s perspective, everything that needed to be done had been done. According to him, most of the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities have been agreed upon at the 13-hour meeting the union had with President Goodluck Jonathan which ended in the early hours of October 4. He said, “At the end of that meeting, the Government proposed that everything that has been agreed should be put in a memorandum of agreement and that the two parties should sign, but the leadership of ASUU declined and said instead of that, they would rather have a letter of comfort expressing everything that has been resolved therein, and that will suffice for them.” Okupe stressed that the attitude of the ASUU leadership showed that the seed of discord and evidence of bad faith already existed. “It is unfortunate that somebody died but notwithstanding, that cannot be a justification for delaying the implementation of an agreement for 21 or more days,” he said. Also at a press conference in Abuja, Okojie, who also confirmed that the money had been deposited in CBN, said the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had confirmed to him that the N200bn had been deposited in the Central Bank of Nigeria.