The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has described Nigeria’s education sector in 2022 as catastrophic, wishing that the country and its people never experience a similar situation again.
The president of the union, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, gave this remark in an exclusive interview with the Nigerian Tribune when he was asked to assess how the sector fared in the outgone year.
“Our education sector was nothing to write home about from the primary to tertiary level in the last one year.
“Though things had been bad in the sector over the years, it was the worst last year in all ramifications,” he stressed.
Osodeke particularly blamed the government at both the federal and state levels for the poor record, saying those in the corridors of power did not give the sector a deserving attention.
The ASUU boss noted that a government that allowed a union to go on strike for eight months without any meaningful intervention to address the fundamentals that led to the action even till the moment is anti-people and anti-development.
He said all the problems facing tertiary education in the areas of personnel welfare, infrastructures, policies, among others are getting worse and not being resolved.
He said the situation of primary and secondary education, particularly in the public schools, is no different, arguing that the condition has reached the stage where education at those levels is no longer attractive to parents to enroll their children in them.
According to him, many public school students are sitting on the bare floor and windows, under leaking roofs and in dilapidated classrooms, among others, while taking lessons.
He said there were many other issues to refer to across levels of education in the nation to conclude that the sector in the last year was “catastrophic.”
The only hope according to him, is for the incoming government to be courageous enough to declare a state of emergency in the sector and repair the damage that has been done to the sector, particularly by the current administration.
“And such repair will certainly take up to four or five years to fix,” he submitted.
