Drop Student’s Loan Bill- Prof. Osodeke

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has asked the House of Representatives to drop the Student’s Loan Bill and termed the bill as totally unnecessary.

The President of the union, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, said this during an interview in Abuja that there was simply no basis for such a bill to have been introduced, let alone members debate over it to become a policy in a country like Nigeria which is burdened with a high rate of unemployed graduates.

Recall, that The Speaker of the House, Hon, Femi Gbajabiamila, who is the sponsor of the bill, proposed this to assist those from poor family backgrounds who can’t afford quality Education and without connection to high profile persons in the society.
Prof. Emmanuel stressed that political leaders across tiers lack the political will to commit significant resources to the education sector and more so, majority of them have their children studying abroad or at worse in private schools in the country. In his words: “There’s a high possibility that Graduates who take this loans might not get a job in many years to come to pay the government back, it could even be than 10years. so lets assume such a graduate has incurred a loan of more than N6million while in school, how would he or she pay back such loan without a job?”

He also lamented on the annual budgets on education over time and how it has always been below 10 per cent of their respective budgets as they believe they have almost nothing to lose.

He further stressed that, the only way out of this scenario is to make the education sector stand out by allocating a tangible percentage of their annual budgets up to at least 20 per cent or more to the education sector as this is how it is being done in developed countries and even in neighboring such as Ghana.

Prof. Emmanuel also emphasized that the house of Reps members should all be realistic and not pretend or deceive themselves as the policy CANNOT work at least for now and also not in near future in the country.”
Commenting on government claims of lack of money to fund education well, the ASUU boss said such a claim was nothing but deceptive. According to him, there was money in the treasury to put into the Education sector but the political leaders have misplaced priority in spending it.