{"id":347193,"date":"2025-08-22T01:18:55","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/?p=347193"},"modified":"2025-08-21T20:20:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:20:32","slug":"asuu-faults-fgs-approval-of-new-private-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/?p=347193","title":{"rendered":"ASUU Faults FG’s Approval Of New Private Universities\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has faulted the Federal Government\u2019s approval of new private universities despite its recent announcement of a seven-year moratorium on establishing new tertiary institutions.<\/p>\n

ASUU, in a statement signed by its President, Christopher Piwuna, yesterday, questioned the rationale for the move, saying access to university education in Nigeria was no longer a challenge.<\/p>\n

He said,\u00a0\u201cASUU also watched in awe as the Federal Government announced the seven-year moratorium; they proceeded to announce the establishment of nine new private universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we agree that access is no longer an issue, why is the NUC giving more licences to private universities?<\/p>\n

“While ASUU acknowledges the rights of private individuals to establish universities, education must be tightly controlled to ensure quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union lamented what it described as the \u201cscandalous proliferation\u201d of universities, accusing past and present administrations of using licences as political patronage.<\/p>\n

The statement added, \u201cThe government must therefore promote quality education and shun profiteering in the education sector.<\/p>\n

“We have 72 federal and 108 state universities, and 159 private universities, bringing it to a total of 339 universities, giving each state and the FCT an average of nine universities, excluding polytechnics and colleges of education.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why not place a moratorium on both public and private? Past and present administration must cover their faces in shame for this scandalous proliferation of universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cFailure to do this will continue to erase our universities from world rankings.<\/p>\n

\u201cUniversity administrations and the regulatory agency must equally share in the blame for the wrong staff mix highlighted in the minister\u2019s pronouncement.\u201d<\/p>\n

While commending the government for eventually adopting its call for a moratorium, ASUU warned that creating more private institutions would worsen poor staffing, erase Nigerian universities from global rankings, and devalue degrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than 10 years, our union has cried aloud about the harmful effects of establishing mushroom universities that the government has no plans to develop.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn total disregard for time-tested planning and ideas that hitherto went into establishing universities, we have watched universities turn into compensation for political patronage.<\/p>\n

“So, ASUU was not surprised when the Minister of Education stated that over 30 universities had zero subscriptions for admission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have drawn the attention of the authorities to the fact that spreading scarce resources over a large surface area was meaningless and wasteful,\u201d the union stated.<\/p>\n

The Federal Executive Council had on August 13 approved the suspension of new federal tertiary institutions for seven years to strengthen existing ones.<\/p>\n

Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, had argued that many universities were operating below capacity, with some northern institutions having fewer than 1,000 students.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral federal universities operate far below capacity, with some having fewer than 2,000 students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn one northern university, there are 1,200 staff serving fewer than 800 students. This is a waste of government resources,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, ASUU reiterated its demand for the government to address lingering issues affecting public universities and academics, including the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement, revitalisation funds, outstanding salary arrears, and promotion\u00a0backlogs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has faulted the Federal Government\u2019s approval of new private universities despite its recent announcement of a seven-year moratorium on establishing new tertiary institutions. ASUU, in a statement signed by its President, Christopher Piwuna, yesterday, questioned the rationale for the move, saying access to university education in Nigeria was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":251026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-347193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347196,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347193\/revisions\/347196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/251026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}