NIGERIA, ASUSS blames education woes on corruption

The Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools of Nigeria (ASUSS) in Ogun State has blamed the crisis rocking the education sector on massive corruption of the leadership, describing the nation’s educational system as dysfunctional.

ASUSS called on the Federal Government and other education stakeholders to urgently address the challenges facing the sector.

Addressing its members at the annual congress of the union in Abeokuta, the State President, Comrade Tunde Folarin, said the development had prompted many parents to send their wards abroad to study.



He pledged to partner with the government  in revamping the education sector to put an end to what he called avoidable capital flight under the guise of quest to acquire foreign education by many rich and well to do Nigerians.

“Rich parents now send their children to Ghana and Europe for schooling while private schools are daily propagated as our poor-infested public schools have become shadows of themselves. We must rise for change of all these things.”

Speaking on the crisis rocking the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, Folarin called for means of giving the secondary school teachers a legal entity status like their counterparts in the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education as a way of moving the sector forward.

“We have an undying conviction that going back to NUT is not a viable replacement for our welfare to be guaranteed.

“The placement of square peg in a round hole does not drive monumental development. A Grouping secondary school teacher with primary school teachers as one union is no more fashionable; it is retrogressive and therefore represents perversion of system.”

Urging the state government to do the needful for the teachers, Folarin demanded that the state government should consider the over 13,000 teachers in the state by giving them 20 Permanent Secretaries with each in the local government areas of the state.

“There are 40 Permanent Secretaries in Ogun State Civil Service, so teachers should have 20 Principal-Generals. What stops over 13,000 members from having 20 Principal-Generals, we want 20 Permanent Secretaries.”