From News Editor
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has that finding of the country’s universities was a constitutional responsibility of the Federal Government which cannot be negotiated under the current dispensation.
According to Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, President of ASUU, the funding of federal universities by government has come to stay under the current 1999 constitution (as amended).
The ASUU boss stated this while reacting to a statement credited to Minister of Education Prof Tahir Mamman, who was quoted as having said that the Federal Government will grant full autonomy to universities to explore new ways of funding their activities.
Osodeke said: “There is no way the Federal Government of Nigeria would say they would not fund public universities because it is there in the law. It is there in the Constitution. Look at Section 18 of the Constitution; it says university, primary, and secondary are free.
“The only problem is that it is not judicable; that’s the only problem. So I said, I don’t think this government, from what we have seen, is going to say we are going to hands off from university.
“If you check the ratio of Nigeria’s education budget to our GDP, it’s one of the lowest in the world.”
