The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, has on Tuesday, dismissed the two-week ultimatum issued by President Muhammadu Buhari to ministers to end the ongoing strike.
Prof. Osodeke made the remarks on Wednesday while featuring on Channels Television during a programme monitored by our correspondent.
The ASUU henchman stated that lecturers are ready to return to classrooms provided the federal government is willing and ready to fulfill the bargain reached with university lecturers.
He berated the Government for failing to prioritise education in Nigeria and said the education sector will continue to suffer until public officials begin to send their children to public schools.
On the ultimatum by President Buhari, he said: “This is not the first ultimatum given on this strike.
“Remember, when the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council met with the President on the 1st of February, they also set up a three-man committee to quickly resolve this issue within one month.
“That was the Chief of Staff to the President (Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari), the Minister of Labour (Senator Chris Ngige) and the Minister of Education (Adamu Adamu).
“That committee didn’t invite us for a meeting until we rolled over the strike in May, that was when they invited us for a meeting. The NLC issued an ultimatum and that committee called a meeting.
“That was 22nd of May, we are in July. We agreed on six weeks. That has expired, nothing happened.
“Now, another two weeks… If we are serious… If we really want to resolve these problems, it should not take two days.”
Reacting to Buhari’s ultimatum, Osodeke said that Buhari was being misled by those briefing him on the issue.
He noted that rather than solve the problem, the government kept on setting up committee after committee with their recommendations getting inconclusive.
Respecting the deplorable salary of an average professor, Osodeke said:
“The average salary of a professor at the bar today is about N400,000 a month – the highest rank, after you have spent about 10 years as a professor. When you are starting, it is about N300,000 as a professor. At the end, you earn N400,000.
“But when you compare it to other areas – the high impact areas, the most high-impact area in the whole world is academics, not NNPC, not Central Bank.
“It is academics where you take your best brains to, those who make First Class.
”For you to be a Lecturer, you must have Second Class Upper. That is your best brain and that is what they look out for in the world.
”And in this country, when you look at our history in the 60s, 70s, 80s, the only public servants that earned more than a professor was the Chief Justice of the Federation.
“A professor earned more than a minister, even more than a permanent secretary. You can check the records.
”Today, they have been relegated. They are not even earning anything. Check what a senator earns.
“We are not even talking about the Nigerian system, university is universal. When you go to universities in Ghana, you will see Nigerians working there, Indians, Asians.
”In Nigeria, like I said, in the 60s when they were well paid, when you went to Nigerian universities you would see people from Europe, America working in Nigerian universities.
”There was pay parity. But today, they have all left. Even Ghanaians, they used to be here; they have left. Today, you don’t see Africans coming to Nigerian universities.”
He continued: “It was the idea in those days. If you had First Class, no company would take you, you would want to work in the university.
”…look at the history, as we are speaking now there is no year we don’t lose 400 to 500 lecturers going abroad. We call it brain drain. And none is coming.
“Just like the doctors, they are leaving and none is coming in, which means you use your money to train your doctor here and he leaves the country.
”The nation is losing. You train your academics here, they leave the country to other countries where they know the value of education.”
The ASUU President sought a stage where the child of a school teacher, a driver, a photographer will enter a classroom and sit next to the child of a minister or a governor – in the same classroom in a Nigerian university, even in the hostel, in the same bed.
“What we have right now is a class struggle and we should know it. You have a group who ensure that their children, with our resources, are paid, go to good environments, good hostels and classrooms where you have access to laboratory equipment, and then you leave the ones to rotten so that the children of the other people who are about 90 per cent will just be there, taking lecturers across the windows, sitting on bare floors; so that when their children come back to the country with good education, they take the juicy jobs,” he stressed.
Pointing to the way forward, the ASUU President stated: “The government should prioritise education – as the Number one priority in the country because all of us here, we must pass through the schools.
”Now that you have killed it, we are now wasting our money on foreign countries. Last year, as claimed by the CBN, Nigerians spent N1.6 trillion school fees in other countries in the world.
”That would have turned around all the universities in Nigeria and bring them to standard, where people will be coming from outside the country. But now, people go outside but nobody comes in.
“This strike that universities have shut down, those who run the affairs of Nigeria – the National Assembly, the Executive arm, they don’t have any problem.
”Their children are not here; their families are not here. If they were here… if the children of all the ministers and all the senators are all here in our public universities, this strike would not last two days.
”When the aviation people wanted to shut down the country, the National Assembly called them immediately and settled them immediately overnight because they all fly; they cannot pass the roads again.
”They fly so they quickly resolved it. But the universities are closed,” he regretted.
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