The minister of state for education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba has said bulk of money budgeted for education is spent on the 10,500 professors in the country.
During an interview with The Punch, the minister stated that students leave the country to pursue higher education abroad owing to the numerous occasions of strike.
On Tuesday, the National President of ASUU, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, hinted that students might have to endure a long-drawn strike in universities due to the non-compliance of the federal government.
In like matter, the Non-Academic Staff Union also condemned the Federal Government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System for lack of transparency.
According to the minister, this strike will only sent more student to private or international institutions.
“Actually, there have been a lot of people asking me as minister what I think is the real intention of ASUU. If you look at it critically, what ASUU is achieving by this (strike) is driving students to private universities and out of the country.
“There is nothing that is now an issue. Even if you say universities are not well run, it is ASUU members that run them. If you say there is no enough money given to education, there is no enough money given to anything in Nigeria.
“The bulk of the money that is in education is paid to these professors. There are 71,000 lecturers in Nigeria alone, with 10,500 of them as professors. There are some countries that don’t have up to 2000 (professors).
“So, it is not enough to simply say we should bring more money; from where? The 2020 budget, underperformed as low as 62 per cent. We didn’t even collect revenue, there were no companies functioning to pay taxes,” he said.
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