Funmi Olaitan, Ibadan
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has come hard on the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, saying its stifling of education funding is preparing the country for a greater future doom.
Chairman of University of Ibadan branch of the union, Mr Deji Omole, who said this on Monday while speaking with journalists in Ibadan, stated that the nonchalant attitude of the Buhari-led government to education appears to be the worse in the history of the country with about seven per cent allocation to education.
According to him, the failure to vote enough money to public varsity education is already causing gradual crisis of confrontation between university administration and students in some parts of the country.
He said: "It will be difficult to have a citizen that will love the country in the future if the current trend of abandoning the poor while taking care of the rich. While each senators is paid N13.5million as running cost per month the same Senate appropriated a paltry sum of N66million for capital projects for University of Ibadan with students population of about 30,000. This can only happen where the ruling class lacks vision like Nigeria.
"This same government refuses to drop a kobo for the revitalization of public universities. Now, many children of the masses are denied access because universities cannot admit beyond what the dilapidated infrastructure can take. Yet their parents cannot afford private university. The federal government is owing about N800 billion revitalization funds to public varsities as contained in the agreements with ASUU".
Omole, who noted that the union will oppose any plan to force children of masses out of school by imposing on them the dues that are the duties of the Federal Government, said ruling APC has performed poorly in the education sector.
According to the ASUU boss, United States of America that all elites run to fund her public varsities, because it is interested in bridging the gap between the rich and the poor, knows the negative implication of having a growing pool of illiterates as we have in Nigeria.
While noting that the Buhari government has paid lip service to public education but prefer to pacify militants and terrorists, lamented that the masses have continued to groan in hardship while the political class has increased in sizes and stored enough money taken from the collective patrimony in preparation for the 2019 general elections.
