IBADAN, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi, says the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari does not value education.
The former CBN governor, who chaired an event tagged ‘Transforming Education through Grassroots Innovation: A Localised Teacher-Led Approach’ on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, stated this in New York on the sidelines of a three-day Transforming Education Summit.
He urged the regime to resolve its impasse with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
ASUU has been on strike since February.
Mr Sanusi also urged the regime to invest in education to encourage teachers to be at their best. He noted that “now people underrate the value of education.”
The former emir of Kano added, “What is happening now is that we have people who have moved into authority and who do not value education as the society is so much materialistic. It is all about money now, and teachers are looked down upon because they don’t have money.”
He pointed out that “most of these teachers have the option to do other courses, but they chose to educate our children and contribute to our society.”
“So, we need to look at our value system and go back to our traditional value system of respecting teachers, and if we treat them with respect, we will get a lot from them,” he added.
The ex-CBN governor started further that, “Government needs to recognize that teachers are human beings. We are in a country with a high level of inflation, and salaries don’t take teachers anywhere, and teaching is a profession that needs to be valued from lowest to highest.
“Our education employees are staff of health establishment too, what we don’t know is that we have lost so many academics, many people who go abroad to do PhD don’t come back.”
He also pointed out that the brain drain in the health sector had impacted Nigeria’s economy negatively.
“It is a crisis because we need the doctors in Nigeria. We need the teachers in Nigeria because we have invested so much in training them,” said Mr Sanusi.
“Both sides (ASUU and the Buhari regime) have a stake in sitting down and have a dialogue, making compromises. I believe it can be resolved in good faith.”
(NAN)