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From Scholastica Onyeka, Makurdi
President of Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, has alleged that some presidential candidates are planning to bastardize the standard of education in federal universities across the country.
The ASUU president who spoke in Makurdi at the special congress of ASUU of Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi, JOSTUM chapter in honour of the outgoing Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Richard Kimbir, held at the Science lecture theatre said that two presidential candidates are muting the ideas of privatizing the universities or initiating student loan.
According to him, the presidential candidates will soon come out with the agenda to privatise federal universities through Public Private Partnership, PPP, or settle for the option of student loan with five percent interest.
Professor Osodeke said, “If you don’t know, they are planning to sell the universities (federal universities) through Public Private Partnership. This is being planned by two presidential candidates and the other plan is to initiate student loan at 5 percent interest.”
Osodeke said that contrary to what is obtainable in USA where students can easily get job and repay the loan, the situation in the country is more difficult due to non availability of jobs for graduates.
He urged Nigerians to be weary saying “In Nigeria where you have graduates that can not get job for several years and by the time you spend 30 years the loan will run to N40 million.”
He admonished his members to embrace unity saying the union will soon take on the internal management of funds in their respective varsities.
“After we are done with federal government, we will come back to the management of funds in our universities because some of the universities have problem of poor management of funds.
“As University, we don’t know how money is spent, how many of the universities have budget. The federal government, national assembly have their budget but this is not so in some universities. We are going to fight that soon”, Osodeke said.
He however stated that the minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr Chris Ngige, has been doing everything to ensure that the union is proscribed but urged members to keep faith.
