The ASUU Chairman admonished President Bola Tinubu to desist from singing the unpleasant and baseless “have-nots” song but brace up to resolve the outstanding issues pertaining to university education as raised by ASUU, inject funds into the education sector for revitalization, improve the remuneration of academics, and address the economic crisis in the country.
He warned that if the trend of hardships facing Nigerians is not halted it will culminate into multidimensional insecurity, adding that it is “more worrisome that amidst these economic woes of the people, the government is channeling its expenditure to areas like purchasing new presidential jet and presidential Cadillac Escalade.”
He stated: “The quality of lives of the ordinary Nigerians has precipitously declined, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is daily expanding; the rich continue to get stupendously richer while the poor are absolutely getting poorer.
“The so-called middle class has since been wiped off by the increasing weight of dependents in a society that prioritizes “palliatives” over and above the empowerment of the poor. So, while the masses suffocate from the adverse consequences of the neoliberal socio-economic policies of the government, members of the ruling class revel in questionable wealth that makes nonsense of the anti-corruption crusade.
“If the trend is not arrested, part of the imploding consequences will be that Nigerians can no longer eat well or sleep well, and the pervasive poverty will have entrenched a multidimensional insecurity with the associated consequences.
“While the Nigerian masses are in multi-dimensional poverty government spent billions on cars for Senators and House of Representative members, awarding white elephant projects, a fraction of these questionable spending will solve most of the problems of the education sector and lay the foundation for Nigeria’s economic growth.”
Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan @ThisDay
