The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) recently extended its ongoing strike action by another eight weeks and this would imply that our students, (brothers, sisters, children, nephews, cousins and nieces) would have to remain at home for another striking eight weeks (two months) and this begs the question;
Why Are They Going On Strike?
Before we draw conclusions, lets do some basic analysis of the situation on ground.
Currently, our private universities are much more expensive than State/Federal Universities and we would not want this same fees to be obtainable in our State/Federal owned varsities but, be that as it may many of these Private Universities survive on much less funds when compared to the funding available to our State/Federal Universities.
To the best of my knowledge, the following are a list of funding sources available to our government owned universities;
1. Government Subventions.
2. Government Funding through payment of Lecturers Salaries.
3. School Fees Payment from Students.
4. Access to Free Landed Property for the School Setup.
When compared with our Private owned Tertiary Institutions that only have one funding source, which is School Fees payment against the following background;
1. No Government Subventions.
2. No Payment of Lecturers Salaries by the Government.
3. School Fees Payment from Students.
4. No Access to Free Landed Property for the School Setup.
With the above discrepancies between available funding for Government/Private owned varsities, the idea or reason why Asuu goes on strike should be much more than enough to beat the imagination of an average well thinking Nigerian whose mindset has not been dominated by greed and lead them to ask;
Why does Asuu Go on Strike?
They have all the funding that they need, in spite of the above funding sources available to our tertiary institutions, when it is time to build new structures for our universities, the government of the day always takes charge and so I ask, what infrastructural developments are school fees payments being used for in our tertiary institutions?
If this is not a case of Corruption, then it should be a case of two sons from different family backgrounds (rich and poor). The son from the rich background (State/Federal Universities) has all he needs to start up a business and succeed at it but always comes back begging for more funding to boost and upscale his business out of stupidity, greed and carelessness.
While the son from the poor background (Private Universities) is always conscious of the fact that there is no secondary funding available except the small startup capital that he was able to raise from family and friends and goes on to succeed against all odds even with his limited means.
It is high-time we do the needful, let’s probe our Universities to find out what available funding from government sources is being used for, afterwards we can decide to add more funding if and only if, available funding is adequately being used for the right purpose.
This is my submission.
