Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Julius Okojie has said frequent distortion of academic programmes in universities,occasioned by strikes can be mitigated, if stakeholders had a forum for regular interaction.
He however urged the Senate Committee on Education which visited the regulatory agency on Monday,in Abuja, as part of its oversight function to always initiate a forum for such interaction between the Commission and the various academic unions within the university system.
Okojie who lamented the recent strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) and its effects on the sector, said as long as universities have problems with their governance structures,it will continue to have negative implication on the university system.
He said the N1trillion universities intervention funds which the Federal Government pledged to be injected into the university system as fallout of the strike would be of less impact if there is instability in the sector.
“If only people knew how that ASUU crisis ended we will all be amazed,that is why I said we need to always engage the unions both in war times and peace times and I am ready to act between the government and ASUU so that we can address those little challenges before they escalate.
“The National Assembly,particularly the Senate Committee on Education can help in providing such platform where we can all interact,”he stated.
On its regulatory role, the Executive Secretary said poor fiscal allocation to the Commission sometimes hinders its capacity for effective regulation as there was no Internally Generated Revenue(IGR) to plough back into its operations.
Okojie also decried high level of indiscipline among academics,saying the university unions rather than concentrate on academics, abhors regulations by the NUC even when more government resources was being injected into the system.
Meanwhile,Chairman Senate Committee on Education,Senator Uche Chukwumerije who led the delegation on the visit to NUC, emphasised that oversight functions as practiced by legislative arm of government were not for witch hunting,rather it was to uncover peculiar challenges with respect to delivering their mandates.
According to Chukwumerije, the university system and the regulators must be able to account for resources invested into it,especially huge budgetary allocations from the executive arm of government.
source: http://leadership.ng/features/376731/asuu-strikes-can-mitigated-okojie
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