The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has again expressed disappointment over the newly released constituted governing council members for the federal universities in the country, saying the composition in the list is worse than the previous one.
ASUU’s national president, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, made the observation at the weekend in an exclusive interview with the Nigerian Tribune.
He hinged his argument on the premise that most people on the list are “retired politicians” and not technocrats.
Osodeke said it is obvious that the composition in the new list is worse than the previous one.
“Go and look at the list again, you will see that most of them are retired politicians. They are honorable this and honorable that. What does that tell us?
“That is how terrible the thing has become. And we can’t run our universities like this if we truly want genuine development to take place,” he said.
Meanwhile, ASUU’s original concern on the university governing councils is not even about the calibre of personalities in the old list that was released last month and later reviewed to pave way for the current list but that it was totally illegal for the Federal Government to constitute new councils when the old ones it dissolved over 10 months ago were yet to complete their tenures in line with the University Act upon which they were constituted for the first instance.
The union said the Federal Government should have recalled them to complete their tenures rather than constituting fresh councils, arguing that the university education is not something to play partisan politics with if Nigeria truly wants quality education that will bring real economic prosperity.
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