ASUU wants welfare of teachers on Tinubu’s priority list

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yesterday, lamented that the poor welfare of public university lecturers was responsible for the reluctance of qualified hands to take up jobs in the university system.

The University of Ibadan (UI) Chairman of the union, Prof. Ayo Akinwole, made the submission in a New Year message to journalists in Ibadan. He said the situation was also affecting primary and secondary schools where “the teachers are not well-paid, leading to the reluctance of qualified teachers to take up employment in public primary and secondary schools, paving the way for untrained and unqualified teachers to hold sway. The result of this has been the proliferation of private schools, most of which are out of the reach of the poor due to the exorbitant fees they charge.”

According to the don, the university system witnessed stagnation in 2024, stating that for the sacrifices of the lecturers, the university system would have been thrown into another industrial crisis due to the alleged lacklustre attitude of the Federal Government to the plights of the teachers.

Akinwole stated that Nigeria’s education could likely stagnate because it had been allocated a paltry seven per cent (N3.52trillion) in the 2025 budget of 47.9 trillion, “which falls far below the benchmark of 15-20 per cent educational budget for underdeveloped countries like Nigeria, specified by both UNESCO and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), which has been advocated by our union.”

While lauding the Federal Government for setting up a committee to renegotiate the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, Akinwole warned against delayed tactics employed by previous administrations.

He added: “To be sure, since 2017, various committees had been put in place by the government to renegotiate the agreement with ASUU. For instance, the Babalakin-led Joint Renegotiation Committee was set up, followed by Emeritus Professor Munzali Jubril-led Committee, and followed by the late Prof. Nimi Briggs-led Committee, which yielded a draft Agreement between the Committee and ASUU in 2021.

“Unfortunately, the Buhari administration refused to sign the Agreement reached by a Committee set up by it. It is, therefore, our opinion that instead of a fresh renegotiation of the Agreement, the Tinubu-led administration should rather set in motion a process that will lead to the review and signing of the Nimi Briggs-led renegotiated draft agreement as a mark of goodwill and assured hope for Nigeria’s public universities.”

The ASUU boss faulted President Bola Tinubu’s move to eliminate TETFUND under the tax administration bill, stating that the decision would kill the little infrastructural funding which TETFUND has been executing from 2030.

“This misbegotten policy will have huge and adverse implications for the university system in Nigeria. This is, no doubt, an attempt to destroy the major source of infrastructural funding for already struggling public tertiary institutions. It is also an attempt to commodify university education in Nigeria,” he said.

Setting agenda for the New Year, Akinwole urged the President to pay attention to the “welfare of workers in the education sector and Nigerian workers, considering the state of the national economy and high cost of living, which has deepened the erosion of the conditions of service of our members.”