ASUU, SSANU Disagree With NUC On Establishment Of More Tertiary Institutions

Stakeholders in the educational sector have disagreed on the need to create more educational institutions in the country and suggested that more attention should be paid on existing ones.

While the National Universities Commission called for more schools to accommodate the rising number of applicants, academic workers said more attention should be paid to the existing ones.

The House Committee on Tertiary Education and Services/TETFUND had, on Thursday, organised a public hearing on a bill seeking to establish the Federal University of Technology Asaba, Delta State, and another on the Federal College of Education Keana, Nasarawa State.

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At the hearing were the NUC, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, and the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union, among others.

The Minority Leader of the House, Ndudi Elumelu, from Delta State, sponsored the bill to propose the university in the state.

The stakeholders were, however, divided on the establishment of new tertiary institutions.

The NUC noted that the 172 universities in Nigeria can only admit not more than 500,000 admission-seekers, while the applicants were sometimes in excess of a million.

However, ASUU president, Prof. Abiodun Ogunyemi disagreed on stablishing more varsities, stating that the more universities created, the more problems arise. “We haven’t tackled the one at hand and you want us to establish more, we can’t do that,let us tackle the one at hand and first we’ll establish more thereafter” He said.