Tobias Sylvester
President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Emmanuel Osodeke has alleged that some presidential candidates in the 2023 election are planning to sell federal universities and initiate student loans across the country.
ASUU President Raises Alarm
Osodeke spoke in Makurdi at the special congress of ASUU of Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi, JOSTUM chapter in honour of the outgoing Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Richard Kimbir.
According to him, two presidential candidates are muting the ideas of privatizing the universities through Public Private Partnership (PPP) or initiating student loans with five percent interest.
He said, “If you don’t know, they are planning to sell the universities (federal universities) through Public Private Partnership. This is being planned by two presidential candidates and the other plan is to initiate student loan at 5 percent interest.”
Osodeke said that contrary to what is obtainable in the United States where students can easily get a job and repay the loan, the situation in the country is more difficult due to the non-availability of jobs for graduates.
Speaking against Nigerian universities partaking student loan programmes, the ASUU president said; “In Nigeria where you have graduates that can not get job for several years and by the time you spend 30 years the loan will run to N40 million.”
Osodeke admonished his members to embrace unity saying the union will soon take on the internal management of funds in their respective varsities.
“After we are done with federal government, we will come back to the management of funds in our universities because some of the universities have problem of poor management of funds.
“As University, we don’t know how money is spent, how many of the universities have budget. The federal government, national assembly have their budget but this is not so in some universities. We are going to fight that soon”, Osodeke said.
He however stated that the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, has been doing everything to ensure that the union is proscribed but urged members to keep faith.
KanyiDaily recalls that Prof. Olufayo Olu-Olo had called for a law placing restrictions on public office holders from sending their children to foreign countries to study.
