FG, ASUU failed in the making of 2009 agreement – Ezekwesili

OBY EZEKWESILI FORMER EDUCATION MINISTER

A former Education Minister, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, has said that both the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) failed to get it right in the making of the 2009 agreement that has become a subject crisis rocking the nation’s university system.

She has therefore, called for a neutral approach to resolution on the kind of university system to be run in Nigeria.

Ezekwesili stated this while fielding questions from newsmen in Abuja, at the Unity Schools Old Students’ Association One-Day Summit/Dialogue on Education, Good Governance and National Unity.

According to her, the crisis rocking the university system is beyond the Federal Government and ASUU, but for Nigerians to collectively dialogue on the kind of university system they want.

She noted that there was absolutely no point of disagreement as to the necessity to rebuild the structure of universities, observing however, that the university system was not just about the physical structures.

The former Vice President of World Bank said what is paramount was the quality of the faculties, adding, that should have been the conversation between the government and ASUU.

She added that critical point of negotiation should be on addressing the challenges in terms of performance, accountability and reward and to design the kind of system that ensures that academics are duly rewarded according to the excellence, brilliance and the scholarship that they show.

“I think that is what is missing in the way that this drawn out issue of a disagreement between the government and ASUU has emerged and what I think should happen is that the two parties so far seemed to have failed to sign the ground for a principle negotiation,” she said.

The ex-Education Minister further said that the whole issues were no longer a matter between government and ASUU.

“This has become a matter between the people of Nigeria, government and ASUU. I think the citizens must now demand that there be a neutral approach at identifying what will be the solution to the kind of university system that we want to run,” she said.

She maintained that there was no time “because the rest of the world has used knowledge as a basis to completely leave us behind in the lower ranks of economic development.”

Ezekwesili admitted that she raised the negotiation team led by Gamaliel Onosode before leaving to take her appointment with the World in 2007.

She said the ASUU agreement was not signed during her tenure as Education Minister, adding that “when I was the Minister of Education, I personally got Mr Gamaliel Onosode, who I thought was a distinguished professional to lead the negotiation, but what subsequently happened after I left office in 2007 is open to interpretation of those who were part of the final negotiation that was said to have been signed in 2009.