TWO WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT
1) The Federal Ministry of Education, National Universities Commission & Tertiary Education Fund are accomplices to the crisis in the Education sector. In fact, they aid stealing of the meagre allocation to Education from the National Budget.
2) ASUU is fully aware of the senseless corruption in Nigerian Universities.
Take the case of UNILAG: i) From January to September, 2019, Government released a sum of N7,530,428,535.69 for payment of salaries via the GIFMIS Platform. Out of this, only N4,339,000,277.09 was utilised. The surplus of N3,191,428,258.60 was stolen.
ii) The Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) was terribly basterdised. From January to September, 2019, the amount realised from students registration fees (Undergraduate & Postgraduate) was N2,579,901,000. The Bursar dubiously reported to Council & the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, N410,679,250 as the amount collected as students registration fees.A sum of N2,169,221,750 was stolen. The Minister & the Perm Sec of the Ministry of Education as well as the Accountant General of the Federation are fully aware of this scandal. Yet, nothing was done to UNILAG Management.
iii) Anybody who has been to UNILAG recently might have seen an abandoned Library project awarded at a cost of N2,000,000,000 (2 billion Naira).
This is the Government, ASUU is fighting over funding & improved conditions of service,forgetting that they’ve a bigger fight at their various campuses. Why is Government reluctant to release White Paper on the reports of the Visitation Panels to Federal Universities? Of course, it is because of the scandals contained in the various reports.
One of the things I discovered as a Council member of the University of Lagos is that the greatest enemy of this country is the 2007 Public Procurement Act. It is more destructive to the country than corruption. The Act was designed with so many loopholes to allow corrupt public officials to loot the nation’s resources. Unless this useless Act is repealed, no Government can checkmate looting of public funds.
As for the current ASUU strike, even if Government concedes to all demands of ASUU, it’s only a temporal solution. There’ll be another round of strikes, if the monster is not eventually killed. For an interim solution to the current impasse, both Government & ASUU must shift grounds.
Dr Dagari writes from
Federal University Gashua
