Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) and a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Salihu Moh. Lukman, has said that there is no ideological difference between members of the dreaded Boko Haram group and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The PGF boss wondered “how can anyone with a child whose dream and aspiration should include being educated, celebrate in any form the closure of schools? What difference is such a logic from the Boko Haram objective of abolishing western education?”
ASUU recently called off a nine month old strike in a calendar year.
But while criticising the union in a statement made available to newsmen Sunday in Abuja, Lukman said people who claimed to be public intellectuals have done worst to Nigerian university education more than Boko Haram whose ideology is against the western education.
The APC chieftain said many respected Nigerian academics have publicly celebrated the point that ASUU has never lost any struggle against Nigerian government, whether military or civilian, adding that these are being said without any remorse or acknowledgement of the damage ASUU strikes has done to Nigerian education system.
The PGF boss said: “It is very sad that it is common knowledge now that in the last twenty-one years, ASUU was on strike for a record period of more than four years. Worse still is the fact that we have people who claimed to be public intellectuals that present such a reprehensible scorecard and by any standard a scandalous credential as achievement is sickening.
“At this rate, we may as well accept that Boko Haram terrorists are also public intellectuals. In any event, who is a public intellectual? Aren’t Boko Haram terrorists engaged in critical thinking, research and reflections? If their mission is to abolish western education, how farther away from that mission is the activity of any group that cause closure of our universities for nine months in one academic calendar? If our universities are closed for nine months, what does that mean to the remainder of the education system? Assuming that secondary students are able to pass their exams, will they gain admission into universities? Where will the space come from when existing students have not graduated?”
Lukman, however, called government to urgently come up with a new framework of negotiating issues outside the scope of labour relations.
He also said APC as a governing party would need to expedite the process of “diversifying the economy and expanding our tax base to increase non-oil revenues, and prioritising public spending away from bureaucracy towards investment in infrastructure and improved frontline services” as provided in the APC manifesto.
“How can government begin to initiate such a process? This is where, as a party, we need to do everything possible to activate and speed up implementation of proposals in our manifesto bordering on Building a Modern Infrastructure, which commits our government to:
“Restore the production of national development plans to promote investment in key national and state infrastructure project.
“Establish a new position within the Presidency who will be mandated to coordinate all government actions aimed at achieving the national development objectives.
“More than anything, the nation needs this in at least our education sector and by extension, given that our political vision as a party is expected to be social democratic, we should also prioritise the health sector too. Issues of education and health are irreducible minimum, which as a nation we must all work to succeed.
“These are not sectors that can be downgraded into some convenient analysis of citizens vs government debate. Any suggested consideration of any failure simply just condemned the nation and our children into aliening with the criminal logic of Boko Haram, which is more or less about bringing whatever is called civilisation, including public education to a terminal end.”
