Written by Assoc. Prof. Abubakar Yusuf Dutse:
STILL ON ASUU STRIKE

"The gibberish presented to the international
community by Governor Fayemi that a governor
earns less than the $1,500 salary of the highest
paid professor in Nigeria shows how our rulers
have relegated governance to an art of lying. A
post of 22.5m form couldn't be that cheap.
No Nigerian professor earns up to 500,000 after
tax. Our universities can't even attract international
professors from Niger republic not talk of Europe
because they won't accept $1500 as pay. That is
why our universities can't compete ratings with
them. A newly promoted professor would travel
through the steps for 10 years to get to 502,000
gross pay, and after tax, pension and other
deductions, he gets far below 500k. This is a
place where governors virtually live on the state
with humongous allowances and countless number
of aides. A nation where senators take 13.5m as
running cost monthly. The budgetary allocation to
education now is just 6%. You cannot put
something on nothing. Establishment of universities
now have become constituency projects. We're
being ruled by illiterates who don't know that
minimum wage issue is a constitutional matter, and
that no governor can opt to establish it's own,
unless there is a constitution amendment. This is a
sad moment in our history and all men of reason
must speak out at this moment. Selling and buying
of PVC must stop. Let us take our destinies in our
hands. ASUU has realized that no one will struggle
for the survival of public universities except
intellectuals lead the way. Funding public
universities should be taken as a serious matter,
and we're prepared to go the whole hog to get this
through. When the primary and the secondary
schools collapsed, investors and traders took over
the space and made profits at the expense of
standards. Now the focus has shifted to the
universities, and this is the final onslaught. If you
check the ownership structures of the existing
private universities, you are likely to tremble. The
national assembly is struggling to amend the
TETFUND law so that private universities can now
draw from our common wealth to promote their
private enterprises. Two members of the committee
have their private universities and are bent on
seeing this through. They are the same set of
people agitating for the establishment of education
bank, the law was passed without public hearing.
Students are now expected to obtain N1m loan out
of which 700k will be paid directly to the
universities. This will help to boost their patronage
and profit which are very low at present because of
the very exorbitant fees which they charge in a
society where majority live on less than $2 a day.
By the time we all get inflicted by the raging opium
and sleep away, while the public universities are
sent under by the oppressors, posterity will not
forgive us. Recently, a whopping sum of 800b was
used to bail out Skye bank, yet we complain that
we don't have money to fund the public
universities. It is really sad. A people united can
never be defeated. The time to speak out is now."