Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has pledged to pay the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) its unpaid salaries.
Goldennewsng reports that Atiku promised that his administration would eliminate all administrative bottlenecks and ensure that universities receive all owed funds directly.
Atiku pledged to increase educational funding during Sunday’s People’s Townhall meeting.
He said: ” I will expand the financing level as against what is at present possible since I’m a firm and serious devotee to schooling.
“Secondly, I have promised to clear all backlogs so that you and your students can return to school, but there are sometimes insurmountable obstacles.
“At the point when the Central Government discharges cash for colleges, it doesn’t go directly to them however to another bureaucratic administration, and they might choose to do whatever prior to sending the cash to whatever colleges.
“I believe that is the stumbling block. Why not just get rid of the bottleneck and pay the universities directly for any debt they owe?
“When I was Vice President, I went to a number of embassies and discovered that all of the employees had not been paid in several months. I even went to Togo, which is the headquarters of ECOWAS. Nigeria did not have a building or staff quarters, despite all of these countries’ poor conditions.
“When I got back, I called the then-Minister of Finance to ask all embassies to send us their budgets. When they did, we sent the money directly to the ministries instead of through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And as a result, all outstanding salaries owed to our overseas staff were cleared up immediately.
The ministry, however, did not like it; They did not give up. However, in order to ensure that services are provided where they should be, you will need to be daring to modify some of the procedures that are currently used in the public sector. We will provide NUC and universities with direct operations.
“Of course, I promise to increase our budget allocation; unfortunately, we are not spending as much as our educational sector in Africa requires,”