In order to meet the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, the Federal Government cannot borrow 1.1 trillion naira, according to Dave Umahi, the governor of Ebonyi state (ASUU)
This was said by Umahi in a statement on Wednesday at the state’s capital, Abakaliki’s new government building.
The governor acknowledged that the union’s requests were legitimate and for the benefit of the educational sector, but he said that the union’s insistence on full payment of their demand was unrealistic because the government cannot borrow to satisfy their demands.
He did, however, say that only some of their demands could be satisfied for the time being, and that they would then establish a program that would run on the basis of honesty to meet their other concerns.
He said ” I cannot see how we cannot sit down with our ASUU leaders and iron out this problem about the ASUU strike.
“I have read on social media and newspapers, how students got into trouble just by sitting at home or engaging in means of keeping themselves busy instead of being in schools. There is no way the country, Nigeria will go and borrow 1.1trillion to meet ASUU’s demand. It’s quite unreasonable. Are their demands genuine? Yes, but we can start little by little.
“There must be commitment on the side of both parties, ASUU is not asking this to take to their houses so to say, they are asking it for our children to better the infrastructure, to better the lecturers and the students. Yes, but we can start with a fraction of that and then have a programme that will run on the platform of sincerity to address all the lots.
“But let me also say that most of the time, our people have low appetite for maintenance of public works. No matter how much you deploy to these universities, unless the users, the industry, the regulators begin to treat public infrastructure as their own in the various universities, it will continue to go bad no matter how much the federal government deploys to it.”
