“No nation can develop beyond the level of education of her people and by extension, beyond the capacities and capabilities of their tertiary institutions. If the youths who are the future leaders and trustees of posterity are trained in institutions with low-grade resources and manpower, where lecturers are subjected to dehumanising treatments, all manner of cruelty without consideration to human dignity, threats to job security and salaries, emotional trauma, mental torture and psychological mortification of unimaginable proportion in a developing nation, how can such a system perform maximally?”
It added, “ASUU, therefore, is not realistic, because rather than calling for a review of the renegotiated agreement in the context of the current economic realities of dollar to naira ratio, they are asking for the release of funds negotiated in 2009, when a dollar was less than ₦150 as compared to present day reality rating of dollar to naira ratio of about ₦700.
“This implies that ASUU should be asking for about ₦5trn for the revitalisation of public universities in this current and prevailing economic dispensation.
The about ₦1.1trn outstanding revitalisation fund cannot achieve the same objectives as prices of items like cement, rods, wood for furniture, reagents, and chemicals, equipment and stationeries, books and subscriptions, utility vehicles, fuel for generators and other consumables are no longer in tandem with the economic equivalents of same items 13 years ago.
“There is a need to review all the agreements upwards in terms of proportional inflation, currency devaluation, and today’s equivalent of the 13 years old negotiation as part of the renegotiation rather than demanding for the release of funds that cannot meet up with its purpose now because ASUU would be blamed in future for the failure of the system to achieve the purpose of these struggles.
“It is for this same reason that ASUU is demanding for the release of the White Paper on the Visitation Panel Reports to assess the level of success or failure rate so far recorded in the funding for revitalisation of public universities.” VANGUARD
