The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, on Thursday, says the union is losing its members to private universities due to the inability of the Federal Government to meet its demands.
Ogunyemi, who spoke while featuring on a television programme in Abuja Thursday also said the government cannot threaten the university lecturers with court action.
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He said, “Talking about options, whether they want to go to court and intimidate the union to surrender. You don’t do that with scholars, no country has ever survived it because we have options too.
“We talk about brain-drain now, I can tell you authoritatively that within the last two months, 25 scholars in the North-East have been harvested by this university in Yola. We know the owner. That is how it is happening, the private universities are poaching the public universities now because they can only thrive when the public universities crumble.
“We are also aware that some few months back, Ethiopia came to Nigeria, and harvested as many as 200 professors and they are still looking for more. I don’t know if the government wants their appointees to start teaching the students. Of course, many of them don’t have their children in public universities, that is why they cannot feel it. Our scholars are our national assets and we should not allow them to be decimated.”