The Academic Staff Union of Universities has condemned the Federal
Government’s over the failure to release the sum of N1.3tr meant for the
revitalisation of the nation’s universities.
Chairman of the
University of Ibadan chapter of the union, Prof. Segun Ajiboye, who made
the disclosure in Ibadan during the University of Ibadan 63rd
Post-Graduate School Interdisciplinary Discourse said, the Federal
Government agreed to release the amount meant for the institutions over a
period of five years, with the first disbursement being N200bn in 2013,
while N220b was agreed to be released in each of the four remaining
years. The agreement led to ASUU’s suspension of its last strike in
December 2013.
Ajiboye said,“An expression of the lack of
integrity is failure to keep a promise made in public. For example, the
Federal Government has failed to release the promised sum of N1.3tr
National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy’s intervention
fund beyond the 200bn released for 2013. Since the release of the first
batch of the money, no money was released in 2014 while a quarter of
2015 has passed with nothing from the government.”
Ajiboye
said,“An expression of the lack of integrity is failure to keep a
promise made in public. For example, the Federal Government has failed
to release the promised sum of N1.3tr National Economic Empowerment and
Development Strategy’s intervention fund beyond the 200bn released for
2013. Since the release of the first batch of the money, no money was
released in 2014 while a quarter of 2015 has passed with nothing from
the government.”
He added that the lack of integrity on the part
of the government and its officials led to the 19 strikes which the
union had embarked upon between 1992 and 2013.
Fagge, who was at
the University of Ibadan 63 Interdisciplinary Discourse also lamented
that the reasons for going on series of strikes for 21 years were hinged
on governments not honouring their the agreements they freely signed
with the university lecturers.
According to the ASUU president,
while the federal government continues to cripple the operation of
public universities through stiffening under funding, the effects of
such deliberate action of government are the “Contemporary assessment of
products of the system characterized them as unemployable and lacking
in basic social, emotional and literacy skills. The educational
curricula, programmes and pedagogy today are as irrelevant and
unrealistic as they were in colonial times.”
Speaking on the
topic “ASUU struggles and the Revitilisation of Public University
Education in Nigeria”, Fagge, who was represented by his Vice president,
Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, said the condition fuelling ASUU strikes
included poor funding, inadequate remuneration, inadequate capacity,
brain drain, poor infrastructure, violation of university autonomy and
academic freedom, failure of government to implement recommendations of
its own review panels, violations of agreements freely entered into by
governments, inconsistent policies and poor planning, corruption and
poor management of funds by university administrators.”
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