IKENNA EMEWU
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi has given a hint to what will end the incessant strike of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and stabilise the nation’s university system.
Obi dropped the code when he spoke at the reunion dinner of the products of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
While speaking at the event, Obi challenged the Nigerian universities management to ask how other public universities in successful countries do it.
He lamented that while most of the prime overseas universities he attended for his advanced degrees keep a tab on him and write him annually to contribute to his alma mater foundation, an assured project that keeps the universities liquid, he said his main alma mater, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) never asked of his whereabouts since he graduated.
Obi said his alma mater, Harvard University where he did a business and management course writes him every year for his contribution to the foundation, while the University of Cambridge also does.
“But Nsukka never cared to call or write me, not for once. I had once asked the university why UNN would not be liquid with over 200,000 products alive and doing well. I challenged the Vice Chancellor to draw up a list of about 50,000 graduates who would each pay N100,000 annually. That will earn the university N5 billion. With that, I doubt if they will still have issues with funding to lead to strikes and the truncation of our university programmes.”
Speaking further, the former governor of Anambra State quipped: “As I said, the overseas universities I passed through everyday update me on world issues, including the Ukraine war. Every year, Cambridge writes all the products and get as much as 500 pounds from each student and more from others. That is why the university can boast of at least one billion pounds endowment fund.
In Harvard University, the same endowment fund is as much as $50 billion. From Cambridge, I have my alumnus number but I don’t have that of Nsukka where it all started. Everyday, we are begging for money.
So, the day I visited UNN, I told them that out of over 200,000 that have passed through here who are still alive, you can get 50,000 of them to contribute N100,000 every year and that is some N5 billion.
I even promised the VC that I would champion it and every year, I will pay N20 million because I pay as much as that in Cambridge and Harvard, so why can’t I pay it in Nsukka? If a university has an assured N5 billion income from such fund every year, we would not be talking about ASUU or any university workers’ union strike. It is not possible. We suffer all these because we don’t have a system.
It is critical that we find a different way of funding universities in Nigeria. That is what we need to survive as a devastated country operating a devastated economy.
We have no excuse to have the highest number of citizens living in poverty, even higher than the two most populous countries put together, that is China and India whose population jointly amounts to 2.8 billion.
We have the highest number of out-of-school children and our economic inequality is the most alarming globally with one percent of the population in possession of 75% of the entire wealth of the country. We need to take urgent steps and resolve these issues and fast too.”
ASUU has been on strike with all public universities in Nigeria shut since February 14, 2022.
With this shameful development, over 3.2m Nigerian students have been wasting and lost a total of over 320 million study days at 20 days a month and some 2.304 billion lecture hours at six hours per day per student.
This number of lost 320 million days translates to an alarming 876,712 years.
