ASUU: Privatisation Undertakers within FG Ready to Take over Public Varsities

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yesterday, raised the alarm that, “undertakers of privatisation” within the federal government were already positioning themselves to take over public universities from the reach of the children of the masses.

The Ibadan zone of the union, in a release yesterday by its Zonal Coordinator, Prof. Oyebamiji Oyegoke, said unless Nigerians joined ASUU to struggle and deliver public-funded universities to the children of the masses, agents of privatisation of public universities had concluded plans to deny the children of the common man access to qualitative education and make them serve their children learning in foreign universities.

“What is unveiling before us is deceit, and readiness to bring university education to its knee after which the undertakers of privatisation will take over. No wonder, the increasing number of private universities and polytechnics against the depreciating and fast decaying number of same in public institutions,” he said.

According to him, the demands of the union are not self-serving but altruistic, stating, “As a body of intellectuals, our Union demands the repositioning of our universities for greater efficiency in national development and technological advancement; massive and sustained funding for our universities.

“A reversal of apparent decay in the university system; and enhanced and competitive remuneration for overworked academic staff in Nigerian Universities. Nigerians should join ASUU to ask the federal government of Nigeria to tow the path of honour by respecting the agreement it freely entered with our Union.”

Oyegoke maintained that President Muhammadu Buhari, would be leaving a legacy of tragic epigram on education in Nigeria, noting that it was a sad commentary that a government brought into power by a popular mandate of the teaming Nigerian masses had turned full cycle against a key agent of development like the education sector.

“We are pained as a Union to observe this government, which is on its way out, keeping a date with history as it struggles to scribble a tragic epigram on our education sector. What a legacy to leave,” it stated.

While insisting that the Ibadan zone joined the leadership of the union to reject what he called disrespectful and demeaning award of money and jettisoning collective bargaining in arriving at what the federal government presented to the Union, he maintained that the Union of intellectual would not be caged.