Government can no longer fund university education anymore – Tinubu
This is Tinubu government's economic class war against the poor and the struggling working class. Hiked fuel prices and commercialisation of education are condemnable. Even after the removal of the "oil subsidy"? That's interesting. But the government can fund huge presidency bills, daily looting by people in power and looting for life pensions for ex-governors and presidents which run into billions of naira of public funds monthly.
This is part of IMF/World Bank SAP inhuman total commercialisation of public education beyond the reach of children of poor parents and struggling working class which must be rejected by all conscientious citizens particularly those of us who enjoyed heavily subsidized tertiary education that made us who and what we are today.
Using Students Loan as bait to commercialise education and increase the cost of acquiring a university education by the people is unacceptable. Millions of struggling students are in school, how many millions of them will benefit from such loans which already cast off a significant percentage of students whose parents earn above N500,000?
I went to Polytechnic and University as an orphan and graduated successfully without any parental support. It was possible for me and many others because even under mad draconian military regimes, they didn't implement full-scale IMF /World Bank conditionalities of commercialisation and privatization of public education due to mass resistance by the people.
What is needed is adequate government funding of public education with facilities to make our schools qualitative and globally competitive, resourceful and very productive.
A nation that loses trillions of Naira to untouchable oil thieves, and with trillions of stolen public funds in the pockets of rogue politicians and public officers has no business commercializing education and making education a privilege not a fundamental human right of its citizens of which over 130 million of its population are very poor. Education is light to Nigeria's future development so no investment in education for human capital development is a waste if properly managed.
In the previous Seriki Integrity regime, the wasted public funds spent on buying cutlery and other kitchen utensils and frivolous foreign trips aside from mindless looting of funds are more than enough to fund public tertiary institutions.
Don't add to the already overburdened struggling citizens after the removal of "oil subsidy". It's counterproductive and crisis-ridden now and in the future.
Adeola Soetan