President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has dismissed the assent to the establishing of the Federal University of Education, Numan (Establishment) Bill 2024 in Adamawa.
Tinubu faulted the legal and typographical errors contained in the document passed by the National Assembly.
Speaker Tajudeen Abbas at Tuesday’s plenary read the letter disclosing key reasons the president rejected the bill.
Tinubu noted that Section 22 of the bill wrongly gave the president’s authority to approve the disposal of land belonging to the university, a federal institution, to state governors.
He further cited some typographical errors, including the misspelling of ‘statutes’ as ‘statues’ in two instances.
Also the omission of the preposition “of” in a crucial clause as well as the incorrect spelling of ‘one-third’ as “on-third”.
The president said: “Pursuant to Section 58(4) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), I hereby convey to the House of Representatives, my decision on 23rd December 2024 to decline Presidential assent to the Federal University of Education Numan (Establishment) Bill, 2024 recently passed by the National Assembly.
“I am declining assent to the Bill due to the following; a) Section 22 of the Bill accords the authority to consent to the disposal of land to the Governor and not the President as ought to be the case in respect of land belonging to a Federal Government entity (in the case of Universities);
“The word ‘statutes’ is spelled as ‘statues’ in items 13 and 15 under arrangement of sections: “The preposition ‘of’ is omitted between the word ‘award’ and ‘degree’ in section 25(4)(b), and d) The phrase ‘one-third’ is spelled as ‘on-third’ in article 4(3) of the third schedule to the Bill.”
