No More Strike Panic as FG Disburses N200b to Universities

 

Following the Federal Government’s move to better the education sector and improve funding for universities as pressed for by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in 2013, it yesterday gave letters of allocation of the N200bn intervention fund for the public universities.

Supervising Minister of Education Nyesom Wike, while presenting the letters at a meeting with vice chancellors in Abuja, said the Federal Government was committed to improving university education.

 He charged the universities to deploy funds to improve infrastructure in their schools,adding that the government planned to take account of what tertiary institutions were doing from next month. Wike noted that assessment visits will begin in earnest. He said the exercise would be conducted in the six geopolitical zones, beginning from March 4.

The exercise will begin with the North central Zone at the Federal College of Agriculture, Makurdi, he said. Wike said the Southeast would meet at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, on March 11, while University of Port Harcourt would host the South-south on March 10. The minister added that the Ahmadu Bello University would host the Northwest while the Southwest would converge on University of Ibadan.

He urged the universities not to see the exercise as an audit of their financial expenditure but a sensitisation of what they were doing to revitalise education. Wike said the events would be transmitted live on the media for the public to know what investments the government was making in the sector and what the schools have on ground.