The Director-General of Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies(MINILS), Ilorin, Comrade Issa Aremu, has cautioned both the Federal Government and members of the Academic Staff Union of Nigeria Universities (ASUU) against the strike, and consider, “the bigger picture” which is the students.
Aremu, speaking with journalists in Ilorin on the state of the nation, also urged the two key players in the stand off to consider the children of the poor who he said would be most affected by the strike.
He said, “All the parties must look at the bigger picture and the bigger picture is the students and in this case, students of the poor who are going to lose their academic calendar.”
He said, “strike makes sense if you make them brief, it to compel the other party to come for negotiation and once talk continue there must be a cessation of hostilities so that all the parties will not negotiate under pressure.”
He recalled his days in tertiary institutions and said, “When I was expelled in ABU and started all over again in Port Harcourt, I didn’t feel it because the academic calendar kept running without stopping.
“By 28, I have already gotten my Master’s degree, if I didn’t tell you, you won’t know.”
Aremu also said that “Every time we shut down our universities, we lower our possibility to be ranked among the best universities in the world and only Nigeria does this.
“Nobody in the 21st century will believe for whatever reason whether poor funding, whether ASUU indefinite strike, Ghana cannot imagine that their universities will be shut down for one month, two months, six months, one year as it’s been routinely done in Nigeria today.”
The MINILS DG, therefore, urged the stakeholders to understand that children of the rich won’t be affected by the strike and that proliferation of private universities in the South far more than the north would further make the North educationally disadvantaged.
His words, “We have close to about 78 private universities for the public universities maybe 100 plus, when you add state universities.
“But it’s also a fact that almost 90, if not 95% of these private universities are in the southern part of Nigeria in fact about 30 alone, are located between Lagos and Ogun states.
“So, what does this mean, even for regional Inequality if you shut down a public university as ASUU is possibly set to do, if this strike becomes a reality the children of the rich will be going to school, those who can go to private universities and they are mostly children who come from the southern part of the country and for the North which is more educationally disadvantaged, the educational disparity will be getting worse.”