The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has again rejected the newly constituted governing councils of tertiary institutions in the country.Daily Intel Newspaper recalls that President Bola Tinubu had recently reconstituted the governing councils of the institutions, after ASUU rejected an initial list for the positions, hinging its reasons on tye fact that the tenures of the former councils were yet to relapse.
Speaking in an interview with the Nigerian Tribune, national president of the union, Prof. Samuel Osodeke expressed disappointment that members of the newly constituted governing councils for the federal universities is worse than the previous one, noting that most people on the list are “retired politicians” instead of technocrats.
“Go and look at the list again, you will see that most of them are retired politicians. They are honorable this and honorable that. What does that tell us?
“That is how terrible the thing has become. And we can’t run our universities like this if we truly want genuine development to take place,” Osodeke said.
He hinted that ASUU’s main concern on the university governing councils is not even about the calibre of personalities in the old list, but that it was totally illegal for the federal government to constitute new councils when the old ones it dissolved over 10 months ago were yet to complete their tenures in line with the University Act, upon which they were constituted for the first instance.
The union said the federal government should have recalled the former councils to complete their tenures rather than constituting fresh ones.
The ASUU president added that the university education is not something to play partisan politics with if Nigeria truly wants quality education that will engender real economic prosperity.
