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President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), Professor Emmanuel Osodeke on Wednesday revealed that some presidential candidates are planning to water down 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 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 initiate student loan.
According to him, the presidential candidates will soon come out with the agenda to privatise federal universities through Public Private Partnerships or settle for the option of student loans with 5 per cent interest.
Professor Osodeke said, “If not for our struggle that is preventing private varsities to thrive, for instance, the functions of primary and secondary Schools have been taken over by private
“If you don’t know, they are planning to sell the universities (federal universities) through Public Private Partnership this is been planned by two presidential candidates and the other plan is to initiate student loans at 5 per cent interest.
Osodeke said that contrary to what is obtainable in the USA where students can easily get jobs and repay loans, the situation in the country is more difficult due to the non-availability of jobs for graduates.
“In Nigeria where you have graduates that can not get a job for several years and by the time you spend 30 years the loan will run to N40 million,” he quipped.
While admonishing his members to embrace unity, Professor Osodeke said that the union will soon take on the internal management of funds in their respective varsities.
“After we are done with the federal government, we will come back to the management of funds in our universities because some of the varsities have problems of poor management of funds.
“As University, we don’t know how money is spent, how many of the universities have the budget, the federal government and national assembly have their budget but this is not in some universities. We are going to fight that soon,” Osodeke said.
He however explained that the minister of labour and productivity, Dr Chris Ngige had been doing everything to ensure that the union is proscribed.
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