We’re Ready to Stay on Strike for 5 Years Until FG Honours Agreement – Former ASUU National President In a recent interview, Professor Festus Iyayi a former National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) explained why university teachers nationwide are on strike. Excerpts: ASUU has gone back to the trenches with the Federal Government. Why are you on strike? We want to compel the Federal Government to implement the agreement it reached with ASUU on funding of universities. In 2009, ASUU reached an agreement with government on how to rehabilitate and revitalize the universities. That agreement was a product of three years of negotiation, from 2006 to 2009, and government agreed that it will provide funding for universities to bring them to a level that we can begin to produce graduates that will be recognized worldwide, and our universities can also be classified and rated among the best in the world. More private universities are being approved by government. Will this help to solve the problem? What is happening is that government wants to kill the public universities just as it has killed its own enterprises so that it can invite people to come and buy over the public universities. Unfortunately, it will not work because universities are not like enterprises. Private sector universities are gimmicks by government to say that they are better than the public sector universities, but then, how many people are there how much fees do they pay and how many people in Nigeria can pay the sum of N350,000 and above paid in private universities? Those universities are not meant for the children of ordinary Nigerians and development has to be about the ordinary people, it cannot be about the rich. So, there is no way, not in this century, not the next or in a life time that private universities will become more important than public universities. So what is The Way Forward? The way forward is that the ruling elite in Nigeria must be sure of what they want. We have an example; many years ago, Ghanaians were here; they flooded our universities; when the Ghanaians rulers saw what was happening, they took a step back and said, lets us change direction’. They closed down the universities for three years or so, rehabilitated all the facilities in the universities and brought the students and the lecturers back. It (Federal Government) must make up its mind; is it to close down the university system for three years or so, do what should be done and then invite students and lecturers back? We are prepared to stay at home for between three and five years until these problems are resolved. We are not asking for money, facilities must be provided to make the universities truly what they ought to be. In terms of how to solve the problems in the universities, when the financial crisis broke out in 2007 and banks declared that they were in trouble, government brought out N3trillion to bail out the banks. First, they gave the banks N239billion, another N620billion and N1.725trillion making a total of N3trillion. Then the aviation sector said that it was in distress, they gave the sector, N500billion and they gave even NOLLYWOOD billions of Naira. These sectors are important, but they are not as important as the fundamental which is the education sector. If you can give the banks N3trillion and all the universities are asking for is about N1.5trillion, the same way in which they sourced the money which they gave to the banks which they are now saying that they should not pay back, they should be able to do more for education. So, nobody should come to us and say that government has no money.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 16:10:44 +0000
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