The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has criticised the policies of President Muhammadu Buhari disapproving of his handling of the current recession and Nigeria’s alliance with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, IMF.
Biodun Ogunyemi, the ASUU president, made this disclosure to the press following the association’s national executive council, NEC, meeting which was held in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma in Edo State.
He said the government was hobnobbing with international financial institutions such as IMF and the World Bank, instead of searching for localized solutions for problems facing the country.
Ogunyemi added that the international financial institutions in questions are both same, and are aimed at promoting capitalism in most parts of the world.
ASUU also accused President Buhari of faking ignorance that its economic policies were making Nigerians poor, and making them subsequently go through psychological trauma.
According to New Telegraph, Ogunyemi also said that the political class have shown that they are not able to deal with the problems facing the country, and they have taken to ensure that Nigeria continues in misery, poverty, unemployment and illiteracy.
“The fundamental direction for the development of an egalitarian society as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution has not only been negated, but also vigorously violated by the governing class for the interest of a very few minority,” the ASUU president said.
“Nigerian ruling class has a faulty conception of the capitalist path to national development. Nigeria’s governing class does not understand the historical path of the capitalism it is embracing; it is a clear exercise in self-delusion.
“Nigerian people were never told the type of capitalism the dominant class is building in the country.
“The inability of Nigeria’s political class to resolve the fundamental problems it has helped to create and nourish is noticeable in welfare problems, educational system, state of roads, access to health care, insecurity, national question, political disorder, economic mismanagement, unemployment and corruption,” he said.
He also described the current recession as self-imposed.
Speaking on the solution to eradicating the recession, the group said the government should set up a process through which it would invest massively in the citizenry.
Ogunyemi said that the investment should go beyond infrastructural development, adding that there should be a conscious injection of funds into the economy, especially through channels that would not be manipulated by state and local government administrators.
“Government has failed to be an ally of the people and has handed over the economy to the neo-liberal agents with dire consequences for the country.
“As fallout of the mismanagement of the Nigerian economy, the nonpayment of salaries or payment in part by the federal, state and local governments has emerged as another affront on the country’s working class, who are finding it almost impossible to meet their obligations to family members and other concerns.
“The economy would continue to bleed and our people would be driven further into perpetual state of need and slavery.
“The manufacturing sector would become moribund and small and medium scale industries would then fizzle out. The economy would become uncontrollable import-oriented and the magnitude of descent into slavery would be unimaginable.
“We are convinced that people must organise to reject the present policies that further pauperise the poor and consolidate the grip of an exploitative ruling class on the polity.” The academic union warned government not to hold it responsible if it mobilises its members nationwide to down tools over reluctance to meet the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement. According to Ogunyemi, failure to periodically review the agreement is causing frustration within the academic community.
“The 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement provides for a periodic review after every three years. In fact, all things being equal, this should have been undertaken in 2012 and another review in 2015.
“However, government’s apparent reluctance to set up its renegotiation team for the review of the 2009 agreement, as consistently requested by the union since 2012, is getting our members increasingly worried and frustrated.
“Government should move to douse the tension on our campuses, otherwise ASUU should not be blamed for the consequences of government’s failure to honour and renegotiate the 2009 agreement,” the ASUU president said.
