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The proposed implementation of education loans has been resisted by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Following the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held at the University of Calabar on Monday, December 5, a statement from the Union's president, Emmanuel Osodeke, stated that education loans had been a colossal failure in Nigeria and some other nations where they had been implemented.
The lecturers also appealed to well-meaning Nigerians to pressure the government into releasing the members' withheld salaries, adding that they view the pro-rata payment of salaries to some of its members in October as casualization. It read; At its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which was held at the University of Calabar, assessed the status of our struggle at the time and made the following decisions:
1. NEC expressed worry over the government's gradual withdrawal from supporting public universities through the proposed introduction of education loans, which have been a colossal failure in our country and several other nations where they have been implemented. We find it disturbing that the program's proponents are so keen to impose the policy on Nigerians when they have done more to drive our nation's working class into poverty via blatant incompetence in managing the nation's economic fortunes.
2. The Union is troubled by the covert actions taken by the government to introduce various fees that will make a university education out of the price range of the low-income Nigerian students and their parents.
3. The Union draws Nigerians' attention to the unresolved matter of the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement, which was the primary issue that resulted in the recently suspended strike. More concerning is the government's increasingly anti-labor stance, which is suggestive of efforts to renege on the principle of collective bargaining agreements. The government's haughty insistence on accepting an award rather than a salary package that was negotiated is rejected in its entirety by NEC.
4. The meeting also discussed and denounced the government's efforts to devalue intellectual work, as evidenced by the prorated salaries paid to our members in October 2022 and the ongoing withholding of their salaries for the previous eight (8) months, even though the backlog of work is being handled by our members in a variety of industries.
5. ASUU calls on all well-meaning Nigerians to pressure the government of Nigeria to immediately address all outstanding issues outlined in the FGN-ASUU Memorandum of December 2020. NEC vehemently rejects the current attempts by the ruling class to impose master-slave treatment as a method of relating to Nigerian scholars under any pretext. ASUU members are not slaves; they are citizens. Thank you. Emmanuel Osodeke President 5th December, 2022.
