President Muhammadu Buhari, has been called upon to, as a matter of urgency sign the dichotomy bill seeking to abolish the discrimination between polytechnic and university graduates into law.
National president of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), Anderson Ezeibe, who echoed the call in Asaba on Wednesday last week, regretted what he described as the Federal Government’s deliberate actions of de-marketing the sector with discriminatory practices, disrespect for extant laws, inadequate funding, among others.
Fielding questions on the sidelines at the opening of the 16th national delegates conference of the union in Asaba, Ezeibe, lamented the plethora of woes bedevilling the Nigerian polytechnic system, adding that it was a breach of the law for government to have appointed unqualified personnel as rectors of five polytechnics that were recently established in the country.
This, the president noted, was tantamount to laying a wrong foundation for the take off of the institutions.
The conference which was declared open by the rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Oko Anambra State, Mrs Francisca Nwafulugo, the official host, was shifted to Asaba due to the security situation in the South East.
On funding, Ezeibe decried that in June, this year, the Federal Government approved N15bn for revitalisation of infrastructure funds in lieu of the implementation of the Needs Assessment Report of 2014.
“But as we speak, six months down the line, not a penny has been released. If you get to the schools, you will discover that a lot of infrastructure is Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) sponsored, he said.
Ezeibe said the Federal Government has continued to change the nomenclature of agreements since 2010 without the commitment to implement the terms of the agreement.
“In 2010 we signed an agreement; it was just called an agreement with the government. In 2015/2016, it was changed to Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
“When we went on strike from April 6 to June 10, 2021, it was changed to Memorandum of Action. And all of this connotes agreement, but changing the names has not changed the attitude of the government in implementing the agreement. That is where the challenge is,” Ezeibe noted.
“The latest one we signed, we said that we need to go back to the negotiation table to renegotiate the conditions of service of lecturers in the Nigerian polytechnic system.
“We are still on the same salary scale from 2010 till now. I can tell you that the salary of a chief lecturer at the bar was about N360,000 per month in 2010.
“The value of that money as we speak is not up to N80,000 a month for very obvious reasons – inflation, devaluation of the naira. The price monitoring index on the CBN website has gone as much as 35%,” Ezeibe added.
Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Oko in Anambra State, Mrs Francisca Nwafulugo had declared the conference open.
Oko was the official host of the delegates conference but the precarious security situation in the South East forced the union to shift to Asaba in Delta State.
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