President of Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, has alleged that some presidential candidates are planning to sell federal universities.
Speaking in Makurdi at the special congress of ASUU of Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi, JOSTUM chapter in honour of the outgoing Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Richard Kimbir, held at the Science lecture theatre, Professor Osodeke said that two presidential candidates of mainstream political parties have plans of privatizing the universities and initiating student loan, The Sun reports.
According to the publication, Osodeke said the presidential candidates will soon come out with the agenda to privatise federal universities through Public Private Partnership, PPP, or settle for the option of student loan with five percent interest.
Professor Osodeke said,
“If you don’t know, they are planning to sell the universities (federal universities) through Public Private Partnership. This is being planned by two presidential candidates and the other plan is to initiate student loan at 5 percent interest.”
Speaking against Nigerian universities partaking student loan programmes, the ASUU president said;
“In Nigeria where you have graduates that can not get job for several years and by the time you spend 30 years the loan will run to N40 million.”
“After we are done with federal government, we will come back to the management of funds in our universities because some of the universities have problem of poor management of funds.
“As University, we don’t know how money is spent, how many of the universities have budget. The federal government, national assembly have their budget but this is not so in some universities. We are going to fight that soon”, Osodeke said.
