The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has urged Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, to prioritise academics in the country unlike how the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has been doing.
The chairman of the academic union in Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State, Gbolahan Bolarin, also admonished the former Lagos State governor to ensure that university education is treated with utmost respect.
Bolarin said, “The first thing that one would expect from the next President is that university education must be a priority. No one should treat university education system with disdain that would make our students to stay at home for eight months because of governance failure.”
“He cannot afford to treat academics like they are not humans the way the President is treating us,” he told The Punch.
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Information Nigeria understands that public universities suffered a great deal of academic calendar disruptions under the Buhari administration.
In 2020, universities were shut for close to eight months.
There was also an eight-month disruption of academic activities in universities in 2022, with lecturers demanding improved welfare, end to proliferation of universities, increased funding among others.
Though, Tinubu has severally promised that under his watch there would no longer be strikes in the universities, saying “a four-year course will be completed in four years.”
