A former Vice Chancellor of the Benue State University Makurdi, Professor Akase Sorkaa, Friday, said incessant strikes have remained a major factor hindering the growth of the Nigerian public universities.
Professor Sorkaa made this known in Makurdi while delivering a lecture to mark the 30th anniversary of the Benue University BSU, Makurdi, titled, “Benue State University at 30: Enhancing Capacity Building and Quality Education for Sustainable National Growth.”
He said strikes have remained a recurrent decimal with dire consequences on the workings of especially public universities in Nigeria.
Professor Sorkaa noted that the reasons for most of the strikes had to do mainly with the failure to honour agreements on the part of the government and such have had far reaching negative effects on the quality of teaching research and community service.
He said it was fortunate that most of the roots of the strikes have origins with the activities of the state and not the internal management of the universities.
According to Sorkaa, another challenge facing most universities in Nigeria has to do with the issue of internal security that has much to do with the activities of cultism.
He said when BSU for instance began its activities, just like other Nigerian universities, it faced the same menace of cultism, however, the management of the university squarely faced the challenge of sending cultists away from the University environment.
He named one of the most important challenges facing public universities today in general as having to do with the issue of autonomy.
He said the Benue State University for the past thirty years recorded lots of achievements and has remained one of the top institutions in the country.
He commended efforts by the current vice chancellor of the university Professor Tor Iorpuu, for turning things around by looking outside the box to generate revenue for the institution by establishing businesses like bakery, water factory, printing press among others for the university.
