Posted by Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria (MMWG), an NGO, has urged President Bola Tinubu to save Nigeria’s education system from complete collapse, bringing up his promise to give the field more attention.
In response to new threats from the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) over unpaid salaries, which led to a week-long warning strike at all universities recently, the group denounced what it called “open and shameful neglect” in Nigeria’s educational system.
Wednesday, the MMWG National Coordinator Ibrahim Abdullahi released a statement in which the organization demanded that President Tinubu’s government “must be different in addressing industrial matters capable of causing educational backwardness in the country.”
The federal administration under former President Muhammadu Buhari “was notorious for non-caring attitude on educational and health matters which resulted in terrible several strike actions that caused setbacks for the country,” the report said with sorrow.
On the other hand, the group insisted that President Tinubu’s promise of “bye-bye to strikes, lock-outs and industrial instability” needs to be fulfilled for Nigeria’s educational system to improve.
Referring back to when the warning strike began, it recalled that Yusuf Sununu, the minister of state, and Prof. Tahir Mamman, minister of education, both claimed ignorance of the SSANU demands and questioned whether anything had been done “to prevent a full-blown strike from happening soon in our educational system; since the warning strike ended.”
MMWG urged the ministers to resolve all issues at hand without delay in order to avert another SSANU strike.
“This has shown how less the state governors rated the education industry in Nigeria.” The association was responding to the news that 24 states had failed to pay UBEC billions of Naira meant for educational development in schools across the Federation.
While governors talk a good game about improving education, their actions reveal that they are actively working against it. This is particularly true at the elementary, middle, and high school levels—the building blocks of a good education—since the governors’ own biological children attend prestigious private schools.
“The nation’s leaders need to change their attitude,” the group declared.