THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has expressed displeasure over the state of the nation. It urges the federal and other levels of governments to wake up and provide governance that will alleviate the suffering of the masses in the new year.
The national president of the union, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, made this call in an exclusive interview with the Nigerian Tribune when asked to assess the state of the nation.
According to him, there is nothing tangible coming from the government, particularly in the education sector, that can culminate in a positive change in the last eight and half years.
He noted that “governments at all levels are not giving deserved attention to the education sector from the primary to tertiary levels but they are only good and quick at making promises.”
He noted that the same age-long problems such as poor infrastructure; remuneration, welfare and laboratories as well as ‘Japa’ syndrome which had been plaguing the sector, still remain and are retarding the progress of the country.
He said it was unfortunate thGiving instances, he said: “There are so many funds with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) which belong to various state governments, which they are not accessing because they refused to provide their counterpart funds to claim what is due to them.
“So what this means is that the concerned states are not interested in improving their public schools; they are comfortable seeing the public schools go down while the private ones continue to thrive.
“These are some of what the political class is doing to the public tertiary institution too; to kill them the way they have killed public primary and secondary education.
“However, we (ASUU) won’t allow them to kill public universities because if we do, children of the poor may not be able to afford university education again in the country.
Speaking further he said, “another thing that shows that the Nigerian political class does not have a genuine interest in developing the public school education at heart is their yearly low budgetary allocations to the sector.”
According to Osodeke, the annual budgetary allocation of the federal and various state governments to the education sector is low to what it should be.
“It is of recent that only three states namely, Oyo, Abia and Enugu, are now showing signs of seriousness to the education sector by allocating a reasonable percentage of their 2024 annual budgets to education.
“We believe that those three states are now convinced that it is only good and quality education that can cause a reasonable and positive change not only in the lives of the people in their states but also in the states and country at large.
“We hope that those states will implement their budgets according to projections and not divert it to something else.
“It will be good if the government at all levels in the New Year could look into the education sector holistically and adequately address areas of concerns to cause a meaningful and positive change beyond mere promises.
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