The government may not be interested in developing the tertiary institutions in the country to ensure that they compete operably with their counterpart neighboring countries, in West Africa, and to the rest of the world and even after meeting the already pending demands over the funding of the universities and implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), which according to the union, negates the autonomy policy for the universities. Let's not forget that this is a country proposing to spend 200 billion Naira renovating the national assembly complex.
Speaking on the Nigerian University System meeting the challenges of growth in a depressed economy, Federal universities still need to use several other strategies to begin to admit students.
The phenomenal expansion of the Nigerian university system began with the oil boom of the 1970s. Following a downturn in the nation's economy and the introduction of structural adjustment programs, government subventions to Nigerian universities have dropped appreciably, and in real terms, the universities have suffered a considerable decline in purchasing power. But in the face of continued uncontrolled expansion and in the absence of basic facilities for teaching and research, the university system cannot sustain healthy growth.
Now when we consider all these, it is so scary that we cannot have a plan of how to rebound the university and we have many problems and still, the universities are not enough for the student in the country.
ASUU is on the right course if you would ask me. And anything that could be done, they could do to get the Federal Government to do what they are supposed to do. And also, we will hope that the Federal government, with due respect, these agreements, that the ASUU suspending the strike now follow suit to ensure that they don't cause further strikes.
So the good news, as they are calling off the strike or bad news to come, if implement the agreements, because some people are carrying the headline that by February, if the agreements are not implemented and executed, ASUU may go back on strike- that is the conditions ASUU was telling us about. Of course these conditions, since 1999, they have been reaching a certain agreement. The latest of them was in 2009 and to date, these conditions have not been met. And we are still persuading the government to go through it. So the students end up suffering.
Some of them end up married, while some with pregnancies that they didn't plan for. And if it happens to a man, that he impregnated a lady, without planning for marriage, you can imagine such a situation. I have a friend at the university that ended up suffering that fate. And his GP dropped. He eventually entered up with a grade he didn’t plan for.
It is very disturbing anyway that this back and forth has been for decades between ASUU and Federal Government. Like l will always say, it burdens to the fact that the Federal Government may not be so interested in developing the tertiary institutions in the country to ensure that it competes operably with its counterparts neighboring countries, in West African and the rest of the world.
Now while we are talking about ASUU and the Federal government, do we spare many to think about that state universities are on their own? That's another issue. Just like ASUU took it up in Federal government universities, I think state universities and other unions should also take it up with their state government.
It is the only right, education must be given attention at all times as we all know.
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