• Education sector can’ t progress when ASUU goes on six – month strike, says Nwajiuba
The Federal Government on Wednesday lambasted the Academic Staff Union Universities for refusing to call off its six -month strike .
The Minister of State for Education , Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, in an interview with
The PUNCH in Abuja , said the bulk of education budget was being spent on 10, 500 professors in Nigeria ’ s public universities.
Faulting ASUU’ s request for more funds , the minister said the union should realise that no sector in the country was getting enough money.
He also said the union ’ s penchant for strike was driving public school students abroad and to private universities.
Following their disagreement with the Federal Government over non -implementation of 2009 agreements and opposition to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System , which government insisted all workers must adopt , the lecturers on March 23 began an indefinite strike .
On Friday, the Federal Government directed all educational institutions to resume on Monday next week as the spread of COVID – 19, which necessitated the shutting down of the schools had reduced .
But on Monday , the President of ASUU, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi , told The PUNCH that no member of the union would resume because they could not work on an empty stomach .
In the interview with The PUNCH , the minister of state for education said ASUU could not blame government for not running universities well , saying the institutions were run by the union members .
According to him , the bulk of the money that is being budgeted for education is paid to the 10, 500 professors, out of the 71, 000 lecturers in Nigeria.
He said , “ Actually, there have been a lot of people asking me as minister what I think is the real intention of ASUU. If you look at it critically , what ASUU is achieving by this ( strike ) is driving students to private universities and out of the country.
“ There is nothing that is now an issue . Even if you say universities are not well run, it is ASUU members that run them . If you say there is no enough money given to education , there is no enough money given to anything in Nigeria .
“ The bulk of the money that is in education is paid to these professors. There are 71, 000 lecturers in Nigeria alone , with 10, 500 of them as professors . There are some countries that don’ t have up to 2000 ( professors) .”
“ So , it is not enough to simply say we should bring more money; from where ? The 2020 budget, underperformed as low as 62 per cent . We didn ’ t even collect revenue , there were no companies functioning to pay taxes. ”
Although the minister said the bulk of education budget was being spent on university professors, he did not specify the amount being spent on the payment of the academics .
However, in 2018, the Federal Government budgeted N 605. 8bn for education , while in 2019, N 620. 5bn was allocated for the sector . In 2020, N 671. 1bn was earmarked for education .
Berating the union further , Nwajiuba said ASUU should cooperate with government and other Nigerians to fix the economy.
According to him , Nigeria is not inventing anything. He added that everybody depended on revenue from 1. 5 million barrels of crude oil produced by the country .
He stated, “ Not that Nigeria is inventing anything. Everybody is waiting for these 1. 5 million barrels of crude oil . They sell them and they become the source of revenue for everybody ; the source of dollars and the source of buying new cars.
“ A country like Saudi Arabia with less than 25 million people will sell 12 million barrels of oil . Nigeria will sell 10 per cent of that with three times the population . So , it’ s a management issue . People should agree to cut their coat according to their cloth . What we are trying to do in the education sector is to manage it.
“ I ’ m not saying things can’ t be better, but all of us have to work towards improving that and the way to improve is not by being on strike for six months and chopping ( sic) the rest of the money for other people. ”
The President of ASUU, in his response to the minister , wondered if government did not want lecturers to be paid .
Ogunyemi was reacting to the minister’ s statement that the bulk of education budget was being used to pay professors.
He asked , “ Is he saying that lecturers should not be paid . If he thinks education is expensive, he should try ignorance.
“ I don’ t know what that means. You think because you are paying lecturers, that’ s where your bulk of money is going . How much are they paying those in the CBN ( Central Bank of Nigeria ) and the NNPC ( Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation)? I don’ t think it is something we should argue about .
“ The truth is that everywhere you have seen innovation , invention and development , they invested in education and still investing in education . If any government official thinks that because they are investing in education , they should make life difficult for university lecturers, then they are preparing the ground for the collapse of the country . ”
He stated , “ You see what happened during the COVID – 19 pandemic. We didn ’ t have molecular laboratories. We didn ’ t have facilities that could empower Nigerian scientists to make meaningful intervention.
“ In some cases , we had to use the contributions of our members to start producing hand sanitisers .
Some of our branches actually used their own resources to develop sanitisers and dispensers .
“ I wouldn’ t understand the context which he said they were paying lecturers too much, when Nigerian lectures are actually the least paid in the whole world . “
“ All over the world , the in-thing now is knowledge economy. How do you achieve knowledge economy when you don’ t make facilities available to empower those that are making sacrifices to ensure that Nigeria could be counted among the leading nations in the world . ”
He also berated the minister for condemning the union ’ s strike. He asked , “ What of government ’ s penchant for not honouring agreements ?
These other places they are talking about , people will talk of Ghana and Benin Republic as abroad , are those places abroad ?
Members of the ruling class have made it impossible for us to achieve steady development in the education sector because they don’ t have commitment . ”
Ogunyemi also denied allegations that the lecturers were spending money meant for others .
The Punch
