The Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has pledged to pay the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) all outstanding salaries if elected president.
Atiku promised to eliminate all administrative obstacles and stated his administration would see to it that universities received any money owed to them directly.
Atiku made the commitment to enhance funding for education during his speech at the People’s Townhall meeting on Sunday.
He declared: “I will raise the financing level above what is now possible because I am a steadfast and devoted supporter of education.
“Secondly, I’ve promised to eliminate any backlogs so that courses can resume and pupils can return to the classroom, but there are occasionally insurmountable obstacles.
When the federal government releases funds for universities, it doesn’t go to those institutions directly; instead, it goes to another federal bureaucracy, which is free to decide how to spend the funds before distributing them to any universities.
“I believe the bottleneck is there. Why not eliminate the bottleneck and pay the universities directly what is owed?
“When I served as vice president, I visited various embassies and discovered that all the workers had gone months without receiving payment. I even went to Togo, which houses the ECOWAS headquarters. Even the poorest of these nations had a building and staff quarters, but Nigeria did not.
When I returned, I called the then-minister of finance to request that all embassies provide us with their budget. When they did, we sent the funds directly to the ministries rather than through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And all the outstanding wages for our employees abroad were instantly paid.
“However, the ministry continued to disagree and struggle. To ensure that services are provided where they should, you must, however, have the guts to alter some of the practices now used in the public sector. We will provide the tools NUC and universities need to function independently.
Of course, I promise to increase our budgetary allocation; regrettably, we are not spending as much as is necessary for Africa’s educational sector.
