President Muhammadu Buhari and governors of the thirty six states of Nigeria have been urged to stop opening new universities, but to concentrate on upgrading the existing higher institutions and properly fund them.
The admonition was made by the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) in the Eastern Zone, consisting of the South South and Southeast geo-political zones, at a news conference over the weekend at the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT).
JAC condemned opening of new universities, while leaving the ones that had been established to be poorly funded, with workers being owed allowances and salaries being delayed.
SSANU and NASU’s JAC, through the National Vice-President of SSANU (East), Dr. Leku Ador, reiterated that the unions decided to embark on a five-day warning strike, which ended on Friday, after the expiration of 14-day ultimatum for the Federal Government to address the issues in the 2009 agreement.
JAC said: “The issues in the 2009 agreement are, but not limited to, universities’ staff schools’ matter, payment of earned allowances, renegotiation of 2009 Federal Government/unions’ agreement and funding of universities, both by the federal and state governments.
These issues have lingered for over four years, despite very healthy interactions with the Federal Government and its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), through memos and meetings, among others.
“It is a well-known fact that Nigerian universities, whether federal or state, are underfunded. We are calling on the Federal and State Governments to improve the funding of universities. We are also calling on the visitors to the universities (President and Governors), to properly fund the existing universities, in order to be able to favourably compete with other universities worldwide.
“We are also calling on the National Universities Commission (NUC) to step up its supervisory roles and concentrate more on the universities that are already on the ground. So that they can function much better, for our graduates and children to have proper education, the universities to have adequate infrastructure and good working/learning environment for research.”
The JAC also insisted that members of the unions at the staff schools of Nigerian universities, who were illegally laid off over four years ago, should be reinstated.
The unions declared that they would not accept only payment of the arrears for the suffering workers of universities’ staff schools nationwide.
