Kingsley Moghalu, a former presidential candidate has urged the Federal Government to invest more in education, as a solution to end the lingering strike by members of Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.
ASUU had on February 14, 2022, declared strike over a dispute with the government. Among the issues raised is the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement and deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).
Speaking during an interview on Channels Television, Moghalu blamed the lingering strike on the non-prioritization of education by the government.
Comparing the salary of university lecturers to legislators, Moghalu said lecturers are poorly paid. He maintained that education is a critical sector that government should borrow to finance.
He said, “We need to invest a lot more in the educational system. The salaries of our teachers and professors compare the salaries of teachers in Nigerian universities with what our legislators earn in the national assembly.
See Also: ASUU Strike: SERAP, Students Sue Buhari
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but there are reports that a senator takes home anything from N20-30 million every month. Based on various allowances not on the actual salaries.
“Sometimes people are very clever they don’t say my salary is N10 million, they say my salary is N1 million and then there are several allowances that amount to N15 million so we are investing a lot of money in the pay of the politicians but if we want to be honest how productive are they compared to if we had to invest a similar amount of money in paying university teachers or secondary school teachers and building to the facilities that we need and creating the laboratory that we need and so on?
“So the political priority that we attach to education is very low and that is one of the reasons for the situation we are in.
“I think the federal government is not able to afford [the financial demands of the lecturers] because they have not prioritized it.”
Source: Dailypost
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