Keeping tabs on Alumni for funding key to ending university strikes —Peter Obi
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi,has urged Nigerian universities to keep a tab on their alumni with a view to sourcing their funding, stressing that such effort was key to ending persistent strikes in the institutions.
Obi, who made this known at the reunion dinner of the alumni of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, added that the management of the institutions must do this to stabilise the nation’s university system.
He challenged the management of Nigerian universities to ask how public universities in developed countries succeed and do the needful instead of always resorting to strikes to press home their demands which government most times failed to meet up resulting in disastrous consequences for the students and the nation at large.
He disclosed that most of the prime overseas universities which he attended for his advanced degrees keep a tab on him and write him annually to contribute to his alma mater foundation projects which keeps the universities liquid.
Obi said that, on the contrary, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) where he bagged his first degree has never asked of his whereabouts since he graduated.
He said his alma mater, Harvard University, where he did a business and management course writes him every year for his contribution to the foundation, while the University of Cambridge also does same.
Obi said, “But Nsukka never cared to call or write me, not for once. I had once asked the university why UNN would not be liquid with over 200,000 products alive and doing well.
“I challenged the Vice Chancellor to draw up a list of about 50,000 graduates who would each pay N100,000 annually. That will earn the university N5 billion.
“With that, I doubt if they will still have issues with funding to lead to strikes and the truncation of our university programmes,” the presidential hopeful added.
“As I said, the overseas universities I passed through update me everyday on world issues, including the Ukraine war.
“Every year, Cambridge writes to all its products and gets as much as 500 pounds from each student and more from others.
“That is why the university can boast of at least one billion pounds endowment fund.
“In Harvard University, the same endowment fund is as much as $50 billion.
“From Cambridge, I have my alumnus number but I don’t have that of Nsukka where it all started. Everyday, we are begging for money.
“So, the day I visited UNN, I told them that out of over 200,000 that have passed through here who are still alive, you can get 50,000 of them to contribute N100,000 every year and that is some N5 billion.
“I even promised the VC that I would champion it and every year, I would pay N20 million because I pay as much as that in Cambridge and Harvard, so why can’t I pay it in Nsukka?
“If a university has an assured N5 billion income from such fund every year, we would not be talking about ASUU or any university workers’ union strike.
“It is not possible. We suffer all these because we don’t have a system.
“It is critical that we find a different way of funding universities in Nigeria. That is what we need to survive as a devastated country operating a devastated economy.
“We have no excuse to have the highest number of citizens living in poverty, even higher than the two most populous countries put together, that is China and India whose population jointly amounts to 2.8 billion.
“We have the highest number of out-of-school children and our economic inequality is the most alarming globally with one per cent of the population in possession of 75% of the entire wealth of the country.
“We need to take urgent steps and resolve these issues and fast too.”
Periscope International recalls that ASUU has been on strike since February 14, 2022. and all public universities in Nigeria have remained shut since then.
Consequently, over 3.2 million Nigerian students have been wasting away at home due to the regrettably avoidable standoff between the federal government and the lectures, with the former being the main culprit.
