The federal government says there are no plans to sell or concede Federal Unity Colleges across the country.
Tunji Alausa, Minister of Education, spoke in Abuja on
Wednesday while addressing journalists on the controversy surrounding the
concession of the King’s College, Lagos to the King’s College Old Boys
Association (KCOBA).
In recent weeks, parents and teachers of the college have
staged protests against attempts by KCOBA to take over the school’s management
in furtherance of the arrangement reached with the government.
The tension grew on Monday when schools officially resumed
and members of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN)
declared an industrial action, disrupting resumption across unity colleges
nationwide.
However, Alausa summoned an emergency meeting with the
workers’ union, including the leadership of the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
Following the meeting, the TUC urged ASCSN to suspend the
industrial action, while Alausa called on all staff and students of unity
colleges to resume the following day.
King’s College staff and parents, however, blocked members
of KCOBA from accessing the school for any activity.
The development degenerated into a fracas, prompting the
intervention of men of the Lagos police command.
Speaking at the press briefing on Wednesday, Alausa said the
government would not extend the concession arrangement to other unity schools.
“No. We’re not extending it. Government still has its
responsibility,” the minister said.
“Federal government, through the federal ministry of
education, does not have the intention to sell any Unity College, and we will
not sell any Unity College.”
The minister said the government had invited the aggrieved
unions for further discussions, subject to the condition that ministry workers
return to their offices and the ministry gates were not blocked.
He said the conditions were necessary to ensure the safety
of officials and maintain law and order, while condemning alleged harassment of
staff, destruction of property and blocking of ministry gates.
“We will not tolerate that as a government. We’ve given them
all the room and scope to do their protest within the ambit of the law,” Alausa
said.
The minister said the proposed arrangement with KCOBA was
intended to mobilise additional resources to rehabilitate and modernise King’s
College while retaining government ownership of the institution.
According to him, the decision was driven by the extensive
deterioration of infrastructure at the school and the need to restore its
former standard.
Alausa said he had visited the school unannounced and
observed poor conditions in some hostels, bathrooms, classrooms, laboratories
and other facilities.
The minister said KCOBA had expressed willingness to invest
substantially in the institution through a non-profit foundation and indicated
that it would maintain merit-based admission while ensuring students from
across the country continued to have access to the school.
He added that the association claimed to have invested more
than N2 billion in supporting infrastructure at the college over the years.
The minister said the government faces a significant funding
gap in rehabilitating the country’s 115 Federal Unity Colleges, noting that the
accumulated infrastructure deficit could not be addressed immediately through
government funding alone.
“President Bola Tinubu is investing in infrastructure,
including the sub-sector, but there’s so much significant infrastructure gap
that has happened for 40 years and we don’t have the funds,” he said.
He estimated that even N2 trillion would not be enough to
address the infrastructure needs of all the Unity Colleges.
To complement government funding, Alausa said the federal
government has secured approval to repurpose about $20 million from a World
Bank-supported programme for the comprehensive rehabilitation of selected unity
colleges.
He said about 20 schools had been selected for the
intervention, although the funding would cover schools across the country.
The minister added that the estimated cost of rehabilitating
Unity Colleges in the south-west alone was nearly N100 billion, making it
necessary for the government to explore additional funding options without
conceding the institutions.
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