By Sam Kayode
Several students of the University of Maiduguri have parked out of their hostels of residence in response to the industrial action embarked upon by the academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU.
As early as 6am on Thursday, lots of students were seen entering long distance buses waiting at various gates of the institution which were supposed to carry them to all parts of the country.
The buses were seen parked at the entrance of Gate 2 and Gate 3 of the University loading the students for their long distance journeys until the impasse between the ASUU and the Federal government is over.
A cruise around the campus halls like Aisha Buhari, Sardauna, Ado Bayero, and even the post graduate hall of residence indicated that most of the halls were emptied by Thursday morning except for few students who were seen strolling out with their baggages strapped on their backs and heading home.
When metrowatchxtra.com contacted the Chairman of the ASUU in UNIMAID, Dr Habu Mshelia, to know if the institution would join the next 60 days of industrial action in spite of insurgency, he said that he was just returning from a meeting in Abuja and that it was not permissible for him to comment until he has briefed his people.
However at a recent news conference Mshelia had with newsmen in Maiduguri, he had advised parents to be prepared for doom’s days ahead because indeed the Federal government has never been serious about the agreement signed with them in 2009 to change the lot of the Universities in the country.
From that briefing in which Mshelia was flanked by many other pillars of the union including Professor Musa Abdulahi, a former ASUU Chair, it was obvious Federal government had developed stone cold ears to the feelings of the lecturers who had no choice but to resolve to the only instrument they had left to cause them to do the right thing which is strike.
After the briefing in the UNIMAID ASUU Secretariat, Professor Musa also speaking with metrowatchxtra.com had regretted that the government has refused to accept the University Transparency and Accountability Solution UTAS a system for payment of the renumeration of lecturers in Nigerians in Federal University.
He had condemned the integrated personnel payment information system IPPS as extremely flawed and unfit for academics if Nigeria must continue to attract progress in the educational system.
“The UTAS system was developed by ASUU and it’s the best option to the IPPIS system which negates all the standard practices of academicians internationally.
“But as the IPPIS system is now, it is extremely flawed because of the lack of transparency inside it.
“The University is a universal organization and not just a Nigerian make shift thing as they are forcing us to believe. It is meant to take care of academicians from anywhere in the world because there must be exchange of ideas especially during sabbaticals and we can’t be different from the rest of the world. With the imposition of the IPPIS, we can no longer invite our foreign colleagues because we can’t pay them.
“IPPIS has a weak control mechanism that can eat up all our time. It is so defective that you can see even names of retired personnel in the system still collecting salaries. Whereas UTAS can work anywhere even in state Universities.”
On the re-equipping of the Universities, he went on ” You can’t train a student in areas they don’t see the equipment you are talking about even the internet in some cases is absent in some schools. They will not be well grounded when they get out to interact internationally.
” It is our desire that our graduates, earn their degrees and can go anywhere in the world and fit into the discipline they claim to have acquired. What we have now is not good at all for the future of the University system. It’s really bad and must be corrected if we don’t want our institutions to become worse than public primary schools.
” We have been doing one step forward and two steps backwards because the government has not been keeping to agreements signed. The government has the capacity to stop this lingering mediocrity in less than 24 hours if they want to.”
To Professor Musa Abdulahi, once the govt can take care of the complete interest of the children through the revitalization funds and release the white paper of the visitation panel the beginning of the solution is here.
Other demands include the payment of EARNED allowances for the lecturers and correction of all forms of distortions inhibiting the system, ASUU will surely begin to take them serious because they are also parents with kids looking for education in these same institutions.
metrowatchxtra.com recalls that only N20 billion out of N30 billion announced by the Federal government was released for revitalization of the Universities.
The university of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) saddled with the management of massive insurgency cases got only N200m in spite of the fact that its MIR facility is not functioning.
