By Moses John
Abuja
The four university based unions yesterday said it would proposed a new National Policy on Education for the liberation of the Nigerians.
Former president of the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU), Comrade Dipo Fashina, while speaking at a National Education Summit, stressed the need for an assessment of the current philosophy of Nigerian education with a view to evolving a liberating and people oriented education capable of driving the country towards assuming its rightful place in the comity of nations.
Fashina, who is the convener of the summit, said Nigeria thrives on ignorance, said about 54 per cent of Nigerians were stark illiterates with only 15 per cent having managed to attain higher education since independence, 54 years ago.
He lamented the inadequate deployment of material resources at the country’s disposal, adding that the crisis in the education sector actually began in 1986 when the Ibrahim Babangida military regime adopted the neo-liberal model for the development of the sector through the Structural Adjustment Programme which sought to run education on market principles.
He said: “The present crisis in education is an offshoot of the neo-liberal misdirection which Nigerian people did not choose. Our rulers still insist in the main that the solution to the crisis in education lies with flooding the country with private schools, universities and commercialised education to operate in acceptance with market rules.
“This explains why public expenditure on education has never gone anywhere near the UNESCO prescription that each country should expend at least 26 percent of its national budget on education.”
He said an estimated sum of $600 billion had been looted from the Nigerian treasury between independence and 1999, adding that Nigeria holds the unenviable position as the second most corrupt nation in the world.
Fashina said over 136 million people live below the poverty line with approximately 79.2 per cent of the populace living below two dollars per day.
The summit is sponsored by the four university unions,the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU), Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities(SSANU) National Association of Academic Technologists(NAATS) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions(NASU)including coalition of civil societies all gathered, in Abuja, with the theme of the summit is: “Towards a System of Education for Liberation in Nigeria.”
Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, who was represented at the summit by a Deputy Director, Institutional Support in the Ministry, Haruna Ann, described the summit as “apt” as it would serve as guide for rebuilding and freeing the system from things which had held it bound in the past.
