The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has expressed its disappointment over the poor state of Nigeria’s economy, saying its members are already running out of patience.
The union, aired this view Monday at a media briefing addressed in Lagos by the leadership of the union, blamed the prevailing situation on what it described as the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration’s adoption of the World Bank and IMF sponsored neo-liberal policy of privatisation and deregulation.
This is even as the union has revealed that the Federal Government is owing the university system a huge amount of N605 billion as part of the agreement it entered with the teachers’ union in 2013 demanding for a total of N1.3 trillion within a spate of six years as revitalisation fund for the nation’s public ivory towers.
In his address, the President of the union, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, who was flanked by his penultimate and immediate predecessors, Prof. Abdullahi Sule Kano and Dr. Nasir Fagge Isa respectively, among others, said since the economy is import-dependent, is the spiralling prices of essential goods and the intolerable hardship being experienced by the citizenry in general.
