The Zonal Coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities,
Ibadan Zone, Dr Ade Adejumo, on Tuesday alleged that the Federal
Government was making attempt to make students of federal universities
pay as high as N350,000 for tuition fee.
Adejumo
said this while addressing members of the Correspondents Chapel,
Ibadan. He said it was vital for ASUU to let the public know that there
could be labour crisis in the federal universities in the country,
adding that the proposal led to the breakdown of the 2017/2018
renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement.
He said, “The union
is again constrained to draw the attention of Nigerian public to an
impending labour crisis in the Nigerian universities as a result of the
insensitivity of the Nigerian government to issues critical to the
survival of the educational system in Nigeria.
“It is no longer
news that the renegotiation, which the Minister of Education, Mallam
Adamu Adamu, promised was going to last for only six weeks, has broken
down.
“The reason for this very unfortunate development will appall most
Nigerians. First, the leader of the government team, who was supposed to
be an arbiter between the parties, assumed an arrogant attitude that
sought to foist a predetermined mindset of government on the union.
“The
union was confronted with a situation where the government is bent on
imposing tuition fees, beginning from N350,000, on students in the
Nigerian public-owned tertiary institutions. On the question as to
how the students will raise such money, the answer that government has
is that it will establish an Education Bank, where students will access
credit facilities and payback on completion of their studies.”
