“The Nigerian government and Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) need to think of the welfare of students by engaging a better approach to resolving the demands of the union rather than engaging in a power struggle.”
The Director-General of the Progressives Governors Forum, Mr Salihu Lukman said this in a press statement released in Abuja.
He said that the continuous strike by ASUU was damaging the country’s education system and actualizing the Boko Haram plan of abolishing Western education.
“Many respected Nigerian academics have publicly celebrated the point that ASUU has never lost any struggle against the Nigerian government, whether military or civilian.
“This was said without any remorse or acknowledgement of the damage ASUU strikes has done to the Nigerian education system.
“How can anyone with a child whose dream and aspiration should include being educated, celebrate in any form the closure of schools? What difference is such logic from the Boko Haram objective of abolishing western education?
“It is common knowledge now that in the last twenty-one years, ASUU was on strike for a record period of more than four years, which is very saddening.
“Worse still is the fact that we have people who claimed to be public intellectuals that present such a reprehensible scorecard and by any standard a scandalous credential as achievement is sickening. At this rate, we may as well accept that Boko Haram terrorists are also public intellectuals.
“In any event, who is a public intellectual? Aren’t Boko Haram terrorists engaged in critical thinking, research and reflections? If their mission is to abolish western education, how farther away from that mission is the activity of any group that causes the closure of our universities for nine months in one academic calendar? If our universities are closed for nine months, what does that mean to the remainder of the education system?” Lukman said.
He added that the government and the union will have to come up with means of raising funds to meet the demands of ASUU.
Lukman said that the All Progressives Congress (APC) government would have to work on diversifying the economy to meet up with the finances needed for the education sector.
“How can Nigeria get out of this sad state of ‘perpetual flux’?
“However one considers it, something must give, if the challenges facing our public university system are to be resolved. Unless both ASUU and FG are able to produce clearly outlined sources of mobilising the funds to implement the provisions of the December 23, 2020 agreement, it is safer to assume that the agreement is already in breach.
“It has to be an integral part of our responsibilities both as citizens and government to make effective and adequate provision to generate and make resources available for all the funding requirement of our education sector.
“A major propelling factor therefore should be the development of every Nigerian child and guaranteeing that such a child is provided with all the opportunities to access education up to university level.
“This is where we must get our government to urgently come up with a new framework of negotiating these issues outside the scope of labour relations.
This may perhaps require that, as the governing party, APC would need to expedite the process of ‘diversifying the economy and expanding our tax base to increase non-oil revenues, and prioritising public spending away from bureaucracy towards investment in infrastructure and improved frontline services‘ as provided in the APC manifesto.”
Suzan O
