No fewer than 500 students that cut across various tertiary institutions in the country who are from Gada and Goronyo local governments have enjoyed free Schorlarship.
A member representing Gada/Goronyo federal constituency, Musa Adar, stated this while interacting with Journalists at his residence in Sokoto.
Adar who is the Chairman House Committee on Petroleum Upstream, believes that education is more critical and that was why the programme was not publicised.
“I believe I sponsored more than five hundred students from my constituency, but you know education is more important and that is why i didn’t make it publicly.
“I don’t believe in celebrating or publicising anything I do especially education which is more significant.
“Our doors are still open anytime. If my constituents got admission and presented genuine documents I will ask him to contact my liaison Officer and definitely he will get 50% Scholarship,” he said.
He promised to continue to bring laudable programmes to his constituency for sustainable socio-economic development of the area.
Low quality of education
The lawmaker however faulted the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU on low education quality in the country.
According to the lawmaker, encouraging establishment of additional Federal Universities by stakeholders especially ASUU downgrades the good quality of the country’s education.
“ASUU was always taking strike actions for over 40 years with no achievement, but are still striking and they are the ones encouraging the creation of more new federal universities.
“This doesn’t encourage development at all. They should be fighting for scrapping of some of the universities in the country.
“For me, 36 Federal Universities are enough in Nigeria, but we have over 60 Universities; where are we heading to with all the little resources,” he added.
Adar said that the situation in Nigerian Universities had become of great concern, adding that “one will go to an institution and see that a department has only three lecturers with over 2,000 students or you have lecturers without students.
“What you are spending to create a new University is about N30 to N70 million and if half of such amount is spent on the existing ones, they would be far better for all of us.
“We should have fewer universities with enough lecturers and non academic staff as well as infrastructure that will accommodate our large population.
“For instance with Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto, it’s insignificant establishing another one, instead use the resources to ensure the institution can accommodate the population,” he explained.
The lawmaker added that the country was spending more on overheads, than capital expenditures in the Universities, while ASUU is still in support of it.”
Nneka Ukachukwu
