Presidential aspirant and Media Entrepreneur, Dumebi Kachikwu, on Thursday, took a swipe at the Federal Government over its lackadaisical attitude towards the dwindling fortunes in university education in the country.
Kachikwu who is the Chairman of Roots Television Nigeria, in a statement by his media office in Abuja, said it is high time President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration wakes up to its responsibilities and obligations to the youths by doing the needful to reinvigorate education in Nigeria.
According to him, such a move, which demands urgent deployment of massive resources coupled with innovative and progressive policies, would save millions of Nigerian students whose lives, hopes and destinies are being mortgaged by the innumerable strikes embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities and other academic and non-academic unions in federal government-owned tertiary institutions.
Lecturers in Nigerian public universities had on February 14, 2022 declared a month’s warning strike over what they termed Federal Government insincerity in implementing agreements reached with the union.
The young and dynamic presidential aspirant lamented that the cumulative downtime for academic activities due to ASUU strikes put at over three years since 1999, had led to unnecessary waste of youthful energies and assets which could have tremendously revved up national development if properly harnessed and put to use.
Kachikwu said: “This is why Nigerians presently yearn for a government that will build the youths and not the current crop of indifference leaders destroying them.
“This is why one of my first priorities, if voted in as President in 2023, would be to fix our education system from primary to tertiary without sparing resources.
“By then, strikes will no longer be attractive because public institutions will be fully revamped and the age old yearnings of lecturers and management would be realised through massive funding to provide conducive environment for learning, eliminate insecurity, provision of cutting-edge teaching aids and equipment and ensuring adequate welfare for teaching and non-teaching staff.
“Education is an investment and no amount of effort and financial resources can be too much in providing non-stop education for our upcoming, vibrant and talented youths, who definitely will lead this country tomorrow.
“Those in authorities today are handling the issue of tertiary education with levity partly because they are privileged to have the resources to acquire higher education for their children and wards in foreign countries.
“However, the truth is that the foreign-trained children of the rich are a tiny fraction when compared to millions of students in public universities who have no such privileges.
“It is my firm view that efforts at revamping the economy, stabilising the polity, curbing insecurity and providing needed infrastructure, among others, will remain a pipe dream, if the actions, policies and indifference of the Federal Government now denying a critical mass of Nigerians higher education is not immediately arrested and redressed.
“We need to constantly train and retrain our youths to make them fit and proper to assume leadership roles which is critical to continuous national development and this is why I Want To Serve.”