BREAKING NEWS, Education
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The Academic Staff Union of Universities is holding the Nigerian government responsible for the country’s backwardness in Education
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Aug 1, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has accused the federal government of being responsible for the backwardness of education in the country which had affected its global rating. ASUU lamented that instead of the federal government improving its budgetary allocation to the education sector, it was only reducing. It also urged the government to commence the process for the payment of N623 billion, being backlog of earned academic allowances and funding owed universities.
Biodun Ogunyemi, national president, ASUU, while briefing journalists on developents in the education sector recently, also rejected the proposed plan by the federal government to scrap the post- Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, post-UMTE, saying that the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board, JAMB, could not admit students for universities.
He also drew attention to the continuous breach of various Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, ASUU signed wth government from 2009 to 2015. He added that the federal government was in arrears of N495 billion as at the first quarter of 2016, in respect of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy, NEEDS assessment fund for the revitalisation of public universities.
Ogunyemi further accused the federal government of failing to disburse the outstanding balance of N65,833,047,372.24 (2009-2013), in addition to N62,417,645,224.23 (2014-2016) amounting to N128,250,692,596.47 as contained in the report of the 2009 FGN-ASUU agreement implementation Committee, IMC. He warned against undue and further delay in the implementation of various agreements signed between both parties.
ASUU strongly condemned the decision by the federal government to scrap the conduct of POST-UME, saying the decision did not serve the interest of Nigerians and that the UTME conducted by JAMB is not credible enough to warrant the cancellation of the post UTME tests. Ogunyemi said the action by government was typical of its current lukewarm attitude towards the spirit and letters of the FGN/ASUU agreement of 2009, vowing that the union as an important stakeholder in the university system will continue to draw the attention of all concerned to possible threat to peaceful development and growth of the Nigerian Education System.
He said: “We consider it appalling that no consultation with stakeholders especially with ASUU and the Vice Chancellors was held before such far reaching national policy like the cancellation of Post Ume was pronounced.
“In a fundamental way, the policy undermines the autonomy of universities and powers of universities’ senate as the highest policy making body on academic matters, particularly admission of students and award of university degrees.”
The ASUU boss further questioned the veracity of the claim by Adamu Adamu, minister of education, that the nation had confidence in what JAMB was doing and that as a result of this, tertiary institutions do not need to conduct further tests towards admitting students UTME candidates. He said even Chinwe Obaji, former minister of education, in 2005 questioned the credibility of most JAMB high fliers, who even though they scored as high as 280 performed abysmally low in the post-UTME exercise.
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