I am optimistic the strike will end soon – ASUU president

JAMB

by Isi Esene

As universities lecturers continue their stay at home action awaiting an amicable resolution of the lingering dispute between their Union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the federal government, its president, Nasir Fagge has expressed optimism that the strike will end soon.

Fagge insists that the F needs to vote more funds into education so as to achieve a better quality of graduates from universities.

The ASUU president also spoke about the conduct of the National Universities Commission (NUC) accusing its leadership of misapplying universities’ Stabilization Fund.

Read excerpts of the interview below:

The Executive Secretary of the NUC, Prof. Okojie, is shifting the blame on the rot in the universities to the authorities which he accused of lacking in good leadership. What is your take?

The accreditation exercise conducted by NUC in all programmes in the universities was a charade.

That is what the Needs Assessment report proved. If the system is working, maybe, the system is working according to his own personal standard not according to the national minimum standard in education that is in the law of the country.“If he is saying that things are going normal, there wouldn’t have been any problem in the system but our students and we that are working in the system know that there is a problem.

And to make matters worse, the proposals ASUU made to government in 1992 on how to get additional funding for the system, one of them has been cornered by NUC and NUC is just using the money without making it available to the universities, the Stabilization Fund. I think there is the need for investigation into the NUC activities.

How much did NUC misapply?

The first amount that was made available, I think, was N1.6 billion and the NUC boss himself mentioned at the National Assembly that the money was diverted to buy a house which initially National Open University was supposed to use. In actual fact, the law did not allow NUC to use that money to buy a house. The Stabilization Fund is supposed to be used to assist universities in emergency situations; when they need money urgently, you can draw from the money and stabilize and when they get their own money, they can return it into the Stabilization Fund.

NUC just cornered the money and was using it to do what is normally budgeted for every year. “Government is supposed to replenish the fund so that there will be a certain amount that should be put into the fund annually; and from the interest, the universities can draw, that was the idea. NUC is using the money to organize conferences and all kinds of things that the money was not meant to be used for.

Any hope for the resolution of FG/ASUU crisis soon?

I keep telling people that all my life, I have been optimistic and that I think, if I had been a pessimist, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I am always optimistic that no matter how difficult a situation is, we will be able to address it. But the key issue is that government must do what is right. “This thing that they are saying agreement cannot be implemented, we have heard it before. Prof. Ben Nwabueze was always in the media when he was the Minister of Education saying it was an agreement of imperfect obligation.

The thing about it is that if other countries are investing about 28-30 per cent of their annual budget in education, typically Ghana, why not Nigeria? Is it because we are under the dictates of IMF and World Bank? Don’t we want to do what is right? Must our children continue to go to Ghanaian universities for education? Must our people be leaving our country, be brain-drained to other countries to develop their economies?

Must we continue this way? Even now, what is happening is that the Chinese have taken over our economy simply because they trained their people, they educated their people and their people can compete anywhere in the world. That is why our President is going to China to sign MoUs. Why can’t we do the same? Why can’t we train our people and give them quality education so that we will also be exporting them to other countries and bring foreign exchange and we will not need to import people to do sundry projects in our country?

Most of the key contracts now are being handled by Chinese companies; most of our companies are down simply because we have not paid high premium to our education sector.

Are we happy with what we are producing as graduates?

We are not; that is what we are crying out for. Let people understand that it is the pride of an intellectual to produce a well- rounded graduate who is even better than himself. We don’t have the facilities to give our students the state of-the-art training and we are crying out and some people are telling us all sorts of things.

Comments (8)

  1. Thank You Great ASUU for insisting on adequate funding of Education & Quality Graduates from all levels of Education.

  2. I commend ASUU on its consciencious reaction against the rot in Education & patriotic concern for future Generation.
    Thank U ASUU. May Allah assist all of U involved d actualise Ur Vision & mission.

  3. Finance minister said there's no enough money to meet ASUU demands meanwhile they do have enough money to loot and to send their children abroad, They denied us access to better education simply because they still want their children to rule us just the way they did to us.

  4. We have heard enough of your stories, ASuu claiming to have the interest of the students at heart. Dr Ngozi Okonjo let the cat out and stop giving us that crap,you are as greedy as the FG and all you want is increase in allowance for work u didn’t do, Frustrating students and selling Grades to the highest bidder or to those students who can cramp and pour it back when tested.your reward is no longer in heaven but on earth bcos u all wl be alive to be judged.if only you are clamouring for better standard of education let it extend to the primary and secondary bcos dtz where d foundation is layed b4 u do d finishing.

  5. This gov’t only consider them self! I called them self-developers! But when it come to masses they will say capital NO! They always lie to us! And take all our resources abroad, their children abroad, we are still watching U̶̲̥̅̊! Am afraid wen d poors tempo reach 1000 degree celcius!! Assu keep it up!

    1. They are enslaving the poor! They denied us access to any good thing! Wenever U̶̲̥̅̊ c good thing is for them and bad thing for the poor masses! God I pray U̶̲̥̅̊ reverse all this stuff! I pray we should have a leader that that will deny any of their kid flying abroad in the name of studies! Let us all suffer together! Uselessnes and wickedness! Obj has said a lot about U̶̲̥̅̊!

  6. Well done sir, is better we suffer it now and let the generation coming enjoy it. This government people don’t understand the problem they creating for our future, they are so blind with greed that’s why they cannot grow a passion for better education for the sake of this nation tomorrow. How can we be spending so much flying out to get better education when we have the power to make our educational system to be world class. I support you sir, I’m always pissed off in class, as a student studying geophysics I have not done any good practical to understand what I’m really doing, is always from mouth to ears. Please something must be done.

  7. Well done sir, is better we suffer it now and let the generation coming enjoy it. This government people don’t understand the harvock

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail