*says FG privatization will make public universities out of reach to masses
By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), on Tuesday, declared that the Federal Government “undertakers of privatization” are ready to take over public universities from the reach of the children of the masses.
ASUU in a statement by the Ibadan Zonal Coordinator, Professor Oyebamiji Oyegoke alerted that unless Nigerians join ASUU to struggle and deliver public funded universities to the children of the masses, agents of privatization of public universities have concluded plans to deny the children of the common man access to qualitative education and make them serve their children learning in foreign universities.
According to ASUU, ” what is unveiling before us is deceit, and readiness to bring university education to its knees after which the undertakers of privatization will take over;”, adding, ” no wonder, the increasing number of private universities and polytechnic against the depreciating and fastly decaying number of same in public institutions.
” The demands of the union are not self- serving but altruistic. As a body of intellectuals, our union demands for: repositioning our universities for greater efficiency in national development and technological advancement; massive and sustained funding for our universities; a reversal of apparent decay in the University System; and, enhanced and competitive remuneration for overworked academic staff in Nigerian Universities”, it said.
ASUU added, ” Nigerians should join ASUU to ask the Federal Government of Nigeria to tow the path of honour by respecting the agreement it freely entered with our Union”.
” President Muhammadu Buhari is leaving a legacy of tragic epigram on our education in Nigeria. It is a sad commentary that a government which was brought into power by a popular mandate of the teaming Nigerian masses has turned full cycle against a key agent of development like the education sector.”
ASUU stressed, ” we are pained as a Union to observe this government, which is on its way out, keeps a date with history as it struggles to scribble a tragic epigram on our education sector. What a legacy to leave. We are pained as a Union to observe this government, which is on its way out, keeps a date with history as it struggles to scribble a tragic epigram on our education sector. What a legacy to leave.”
Pointing out that the Ibadan zone ASUU joined the leadership of the union to reject ” disrespectful and demeaning award of money and jettisoning collective bargaining in arriving at what the federal government presented to the Union saying the Union of intellectual will not be caged.”
ASUU maintained ” the main issue, involved in the current ASUU travails is about living up to responsibility or the abdication of it. If government is not a continuum, ASUU as a body of intellectuals would not have been insisting on re-negotiating and implementing an agreement reached and signed with it since 2009 by Federal Government of Nigeria.
” An agreement reached with FGN whose re-negotiation ought to have commenced in 2012, did not take off until 2017 under Mr. Wale Babalakin (SAN) who was challenged majorly by ASUU for recommending that students in Nigerian Universities should pay up to a million Naira per session as tuition fee. The recommendations of Munzali Jubril Committee’s of 2020 were equally rejected by FGN. This Committee was replaced lately by Nimi Briggs’s Committee in March, 2022. For crying out loud, FGN has its mind made up ab initio. All ASUU’s patriotic yearnings to repositioning public universities.
