PDP presidential candidate , former Vice President Atiku Abubakar submitted on Monday that if elected as president next year, his administration will have the second tier of government taking over the control of federal universities in the country.
Team@orientactualmags.com learned Atiku, who said this as a panelist during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association , NBA which was held at the Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos, noted that the Federal Government does not have infinite resources.
The conference that had as its theme ‘Bold Transitions’ will end on August 26.
‘The only way is to make sure that you make an enabling environment available to both foreign and local investors to participate in the economy of our country, whether it is infrastructure, whether it is education, whether it is power.
I had an argument with someone , who is a university professor at the Federal University, Lokoja. He said he read in my policy document that I intended to devolve, in other words, to return education to the states. How dare do I do that?
I said, ‘Mr Professor, do you realize that the first set of our universities belonged to the regional governments?’ He said, ‘Yes’. I said who are the successors of the regional government? He said ‘the states’.
I said the children you send to America, to England, who own those universities? Mostly the private sector. So, why is it that you think we cannot do it here? We don’t have the money’ he said.
It will be recalled that members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities have been on strike since February 14.
Commenting on the state of the nation, Atiku said Nigeria had never experienced this level of poverty, insecurity and unemployment.
‘ Since the return of democracy in 1998/99, Nigeria has never found itself in such a very critical point in our history.
Today, we have had all the negative indices. Today, we are all disunited in the nation. We have never experienced this level of poverty. We have never experienced this state of insecurity. We have never experienced this level of unemployment. We have recognized all these negative developments in our history.
This is where history and experience beckon on us to make sure that we don’t get it wrong at this point in time otherwise if we get it wrong. I don’t know when we will ever get it right.
I have been involved in the struggle to return this country to democracy during military days. In fact, I can even say I was even lucky to be alive because so many of my contemporaries have been killed in this struggle but by the grace of God I have survived till this point in time’ he said. -Team@orientactualmags.com
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