ASUU Seeks Paradigm Shift In Template For Funding Public Varsities
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called for a paradigm shift in the template for the establishment and funding of public varsities in the country.
ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, made the call in a paper he presented at the Ralph Okpara memorial lecture, organized by the National Association of Seadogs in Benin City.
According to him, the major problems facing Nigeria’s public universities included the template set up without a template for funding them.
He demanded a paradigm shift in term of funding, appointment and recruitment, especially into the state universities by the state governments.
Osodeke explains that the rot started during the Shagari administration and Babangida military regime.
Before then, the ASUU president recalled that Nigerian universities were among the world’s best.
Earlier in his opening remark, the National President of NAS, Abiola Owoaje, said that the environment of learning and intellectualism is crucial to the group, noting that the Ralph Opara Memorial Lecture has become a rallying point for deep introspection on national and international topical issues.
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He said, “This intellectual platform keeps evolving as a versatile crucible for cerebral and stimulating discourses geared towards expanding the frontiers of knowledge and interrogating complex socio-political and economic formulas while championing informed, radical and bold solutions for the good of the community of humanity.
“The theme for this year’s lecture reflects our deep concern for the decadence that tertiary education has become in Nigeria.
“Many of us were schooled in Nigeria when our tertiary institutions were indeed citadels of learning, intellectual fervour flamed, and ideological orientations were anchored on learning and making Nigeria progressively great.
“Now the situation is pathetic. Our citadels of learning have become breeding grounds for gangsterism, extremist elements and festering criminality.
“Also, successive governments have paid lip service to the development of education and are bent on destroying tertiary institutions as they did to primary and secondary education,” he noted.
