Founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD) and frontline legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN), has thrown his weight behind the demand for proper funding of education by the striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and called for urgent action to end the strike.
Chief Babalola, who made the remarks on Friday at the celebration of the 9th year of the establishment of ABUAD, noted that he had always been against strikes by ASUU, but said this time, the lecturers were justified in their demands.
Babalola said “I have been Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, University of Lagos (UNILAG) and I knew that the universities lack facilities and equipment to be of high standard.
“In our universities, students are not resident in schools. Some stay outside the lecture theatres to receive lectures, some even use forest as toilets. Lecturers are not paid as and when due. All these are intolerable.
“So, ASUU’s case is strong this time and I support them in spite of the fact that I have been criticizing them in the recent past, but I stand with them this time.
“FG must look for funds to make our universities be of high standard. UNESCO recommended 26 per cent, but the FG still allots as low as seven per cent to education. FG must increase allocations to universities and monitor how the monies are appropriated because accountability has always been our problem.”
Babalola noted that ABUAD had made giant strides in its nine years of existence, saying, unlike the government universities ABUAD had built several infrastructures in time and had put them to proper use.
He said “ASUU alleged that over 70 per cent of the projects in our universities are uncompleted for lack of funds and corruption, this is wrong.
“In ABUAD, we complete our projects in time. We built our Planetarium within six months, some federal universities started theirs 10 years ago and they have not completed it.”
At the event attended by the management of ABUAD, led by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Ajisafe; and staff members, Babalola said ABUAD had become one of the best universities in Nigeria in nine years “because the management works extra hard to monitor the lecturers and students to be able to embrace the vision.”
He noted that “In the Nigerian Law School examinations conducted in 2018, 12 ABUAD students got first class with one of them emerging overall best. They presented 36 prizes and our students carted away 24 of them. This showed that keeping the students here under monitoring was working.
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“We shall continue to celebrate those staff who are working to keep the standard we set and we have achieved for ourselves. But whoever wants to bring it down among the students and teachers shall be sanctioned, those who don’t want to share our vision must go away.
“From next week Monday, we will begin teachers’ annual assessment to be able to know those who are working for our glory here and they shall get their rewards.”
He commended the staff members of the institution for their commitment, saying this had contributed to ABUAD becoming a leading university in Nigeria.
He, however, warned that the management shall wield the big stick against staff not supporting the vision of the institution, which he said was to bring a paradigm shift to university education.
He said it sounded disgusting that the FG could earmark seven per cent budgetary allocation to fund education when the United Nations Educational and Socio-Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recommended 26 per cent.
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