Immediate past Minister of State For Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, has apologised to Nigerian students and parents concerning the ongoing ASUU strike.
Nwajiuba who made the apology Monday Night while appearing on Arise TV Channel, said as a way of tackling the issue of inconsistent and non-payment of funds to schools, the federal government is currently working on a funding structure for public varsities in the country.
Nwajiuba, who recently resigned from his ministerial position to pursue his presidential ambition, said that all his children attended public universities and that two of them are also affected by the strike.
“I do apologize to Nigerian students because as their minister, I will take responsibility. But also, on behalf of the federal government, I would say ‘please understand what the issues are.
“All my four children have passed through Nigerian universities. I still have two who are at home now, because they are all in public universities,” he said.
The APC Presidential aspirant added that he and the Education Minister, Adamu Adamu, are discussing with the president ways in which Federal Universities can begin to earn money for themselves.
“I have proposed, and the Minister of Education (Adamu Adamu) will continue discussing this with Mr. President, a new scheme in which universities have a different way of earning money to be able to care for themselves.
“Because you see, there are only 50 of these federal universities and there are 200 others. However, these 50 alone are more than 75 percent of the number of students in the entire university structure – about 2.2m of them.
“So, it is important we give them a funding structure; we need to bring a funding structure to the table because this coming hand-in-cap to the Federal Government at all times cannot be continued and is not sustainable,” he said.