Lawmaker blames ASUU for poor standard of education

Alhaji Musa Adar, a member of the House of Representatives, representing Goronyo/Gada Federal Constituency has faulted the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) on lower education quality in Nigeria.

Adar (APC-Sokoto), the Chairman House Committee on Petroleum Resources Upstream, made the assertion, while addressing newsmen at his resident on Monday in Sokoto.

According to the lawmaker, encouraging additional Federal universities by elites, especially ASUU is what is downgrading the good quality of the country's education.

"ASUU was always taking strike actions for over 40 years with no achievement but are still striking and they are the ones encouraging the creation of more new universities.

"This doesn’t make sense at all. They should be fighting for scraping of some of the universities.

"For me, 36 Federal universities are enough in Nigeria, but today we have over 60 universities; where are we heading to," he said.

Adar said that the situation in Nigerian universities had become of great concern, adding, "One will go to an institution and see that a department has only three lecturers with students of over 2,000 or where you have lecturers without students."

"What you are spending to create a new university is about N30 million to N70 million and if half of such amount is spent on the existing ones, they will be far better for all of us.

"We should have fewer universities with enough lecturers and non academic staff as well as infrastructure that will accommodate our large population.

"For instance with Usmanu Danfodio University in Sokoto, it is insignificant establishing another, instead use the resources to ensure the institution can accommodate the population," he added.

The lawmaker said that the country was spending more on the overheads than capital expenditures in the universities while ASUU is still in support of it.

"For example, one of the bills that passed second reading to introduce moral status for the university students was during a public hearing rejected by stakeholders.

"But any time a student is graduating, the university will have a citation by the Senate that it found him worthy in learning and character.

"How was the student’s character assessed, is it formal or informal? This should be part of our curriculum and students must pass the character test before leaving the university.

"The reason is that from the Police record, most of the criminals that we have today in the country are university students," he said.