During a meeting yesterday, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Akure zone, which represents academic staff members at public universities in Osun, Ondo, and Ekiti states, expressed unhappiness with the education sector’s inadequate funding.
Speaking to journalists prior to the zonal meeting at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Dr. Adeola Egbedokun, the ASUU Akure Zonal Coordinator, emphasised the link between insufficient education funding and the country’s rising violent crime rate, particularly kidnappings.
Egbedokun was accompanied by ASUU chairpersons from various universities, including Anthony Odiwe of OAU, Pius Mogaji of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Sola Afolayan of Ekiti State University, Abayomi Fagbuagun of the Federal University of Oye-Ekiti, and Abraham Oladebeye of the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo. They collectively accused the federal government of failing to keep its pledge to dismantle the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS), which pays university instructors.
He said, “The government is insincere about funding education. They are insincere because how can successive administrations arrange several meetings where agreements were signed and such agreements would not be implemented? What has taken us to this particular quagmire is that the government failed to own up to the agreements signed with ASUU.
“At this point again, we have to talk about the 26% budgetary allocation which of course is the yardstick set by UNESCO. If the government is sincere, definitely government will definitely know that it is the only solution to the present problem that we find ourselves in.
“Most of these people that are creating insecurity, the hoodlums, perhaps it was because they didn’t have sufficient education. If education had been properly funded, definitely there wouldn’t have been any need for agitation from members of staff because they would have been paid.
“Presently as we talk some people are hiding in the bush looking for who to kidnap because the government has surreptitiously removed them from having education. Education happens to be the only saving grace for people to live a good life.”