The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that the poor welfare conditions of public university lecturers are making qualified people reluctant to take up jobs in the university system.
Chairman of the University of Ibadan chapter of the union, Professor Ayo Akinwole, who stated this in a New Year message, said that the situation also affects primary and secondary schools, where “the teachers are not well-paid, leading to the reluctance of qualified teachers to take up employment in public primary and secondary schools, paving the way for the untrained and unqualified teachers to hold sway.
“The result of this has been the proliferation of private schools, most of which are out of the reach of the poor due to the exorbitant fees they charge”, he said.
According to him, the university system witnessed stagnation in 2024. He stated that if not for the sacrifices of the lecturers, the university system would have been thrown into another industrial crisis because of the federal government’s lacklustre attitude to the plight of lecturers.
He noted that Nigeria’s education was likely to remain the same because it has been allocated about seven per cent (N3.52trillion) in the 2025 budget (47.90 trillion), “Which falls far below the benchmark of 15%-20% educational budget for underdeveloped countries like Nigeria, specified by both UNESCO and United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), which our Union has advocated.”
While commending the federal government for setting up a committee to renegotiate the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, Akinwole warned against delayed tactics, as was the case in previous administrations.
“To be sure, since 2017, various committees have been put in place by the Government to renegotiate the agreement with ASUU. For instance, the Babalakin-led Joint Renegotiation Committee was set up, followed by Emeritus Professor Munzali Jubril-led Committee, and followed by the Late Prof Nimi Briggs-led Committee, which yielded a draft Agreement between the Committee and ASUU in 2021.
“Unfortunately, the Buhari administration refused to sign the Agreement reached by a Committee set up by it. It is, therefore, our opinion that instead of a fresh renegotiation of the Agreement, the Tinubu-led administration should rather set in motion a process that will lead to the review and signing of the Nimi Briggs-led renegotiated draft agreement as a mark of goodwill and assured hope for Nigeria’s public universities.”
The ASUU boss also criticised President Bola Tinubu’s agenda to eliminate TETFUND under the tax administration bill, stating that this would kill the little infrastructural funding TETFUND had been executing since 2030.
“This misbegotten policy will have vast and adverse implications for the university system in Nigeria. This is undoubtedly an attempt to destroy the significant source of infrastructural funding for already struggling public tertiary institutions.
“It is also an attempt to modify university education in Nigeria. “A part of the tax administration bill proposes eliminating the education tax, to be replaced by a “development levy.
“This would effectively disrupt the revenue stream of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), an agency set up as a product of the ingenuity and struggles of ASUU that has been the major source of funding for infrastructure development in many public tertiary institutions over the last decade.’’
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