Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, has accused the Federal Government of not prioritising tertiary education.
According to him, the government spent N4 trillion on fuel subsidies while ignoring issues like university education.
On Wednesday, during a Television programme, Osodeke asked the government to take N200 billion from the N4 trillion budgeted for subsidy to address the union’s members’ problems, putting an end to the union’s industrial action.
Osodeke said, “It is always funny that the government cannot raise N200bn to revamp all Nigeria’s universities annually, to world standards. The same government can raise N4trillion for fuel subsidy.
“You can raise a budget to make N4trillion for subsidy in a year, but you cannot raise N200bn to fund your education where you don’t have the infrastructure. You can spend N228bn to feed children in primary or secondary schools but you cannot raise this fund for your university; it is an issue of priority. That is the problem.
“If you remove N200bn from N4trillion to fund your universities, you still have N3.8trillion for fuel subsidy.
“We don’t believe there is a fuel subsidy. There is no country where you have the crude intelligentsia. You have been importing fuel for the past 20 years; something is ongoing. No country in the world will do that. In the 60s, we built four refineries, and between 1999 and now, we cannot build one or service the ones we had.”