By Ige Adekunle
The Vice-Chancellor, Trinity University, Yaba, Lagos, Prof. Charles Ayo, has called on the Federal Government to improve access to quality education in the country.
Ayo made the appeal while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Ota, Ogun.
He noted that this had become necessary because tertiary education was the bedrock of social-economic, political, technological and economic transformation of any country.
Ayo, a former VC of Covenant University, Ota, was reacting to the directive of the National Industrial Court that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) should suspend its ongoing strike.
He noted that the nation was losing a lot of money with many students going abroad to study, as a result of poor quality and access to education in the country.
He said an improved education system was the panacea to insecurity and the economic situation of the country.
“What should be paramount to the federal government should be how to improve access and quality of our education system.
“The access and quality of the education system is poor; the nation has the capacity to absorb between 400,000 to 500,000 of the students yearning for admission annually,” he said.
The vice-chancellor said a small county like Ghana had been able to accommodate over 75,000 Nigerian students, noting that the country had improved access and quality of education.
He appealed to the federal government to be more responsive to the demands of the ASUU so as to end the incessant strikes.
This, he said, would improve the state of education, adding that the quality of the nation’s education system was going down.
Ayo said asking ASUU to end the strike was postponing the evil days, not an attempt to solve the problems for which ASUU called the strike.
Ayo emphasised that the totality of the conditions of ASUU needed to be met by the federal government before asking them to end their strike.
NAN reports that the National Industrial Court on Wednesday in Abuja, ordered ASUU to end their seven months old strike.
NAN also reports that ASUU had embarked on strike on Feb. 14, after the federal government failed to meet its demands. (NAN)
