Rauf Olayemi, Bauchi
The academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that it would sponsor a bill at the National Assembly to force political office holders to return their children from foreign universities to Nigeria.
The President of the Union, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke made this known to Nigerian Newstrack, in its Bauchi Zone, at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), on Thursday at a one-day summit on 'State of the Nation'.
Osodeke said those who control Nigerian resources do not prioritise the nation's education. "Today, our leaders and those who control our wealth have completely abandoned education. Nigeria is riding on abandoned education and what they do as an alternative is creating avenues for themselves: having abandoned and killed our education, they looked for somewhere they have invested in education to send their children, relatives and others.
"In Nigeria today, if a commissioner, a governor or a president has a headache the next day he joins the plane. He is afraid of going to the clinic where his people are to get treatment. That's where we are today.
"As a union, we are having a proposition to be put forward to the House Committee on ICT to work on it. We are going to storm the National Assembly with a bill. That bill is titled 'bring back your children'. We are going to mobilise the students, NGOs –all of us will storm the national assembly and will ensure that a bill is passed."
He said anyone who joins political office in Nigeria must bring their children to Nigerian school; either university, college of education, secondary or primary. "If the children of these people are in the country's universities, our education would not have been where it is today. With this, they will pay attention to the problem," he said.
ALSO, the Union presented N100,000 each to six indigent students in both state and federal universities in Bauchi, Plateau and Gombe. One of the beneficiaries, Iqmat Temitope Popoola, a 300level of Agricultural Economics at the ATBU was elated receiving her cheque.
