Nigeria operating crony capitalism- former ASUU President

A former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Prof. Abdullahi Sule, says Nigeria leaders are operating crony capitalism.

He also alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari does not know what economic system the country is operating.

The former ASUU boss equally accused former Olusegun Obasanjo of intensifying the aforementioned system of capitalism, in 1999, saying that while politics was going in a different direction, the economy was also going in a different direction, in the country.

Prof. Sule stated this during a Town Hall meeting with critical stakeholders in the education sector in Plateau state, held at University of Jos ASUU Secretariat, in Jos, the Plateau State Capital.

He said, “Your rulers don’t know the type of economy they are managing, they will say they are developing Nigerian, private sector-driven; its so hypocritical that they will not tell you that you are running a capitalist system and the type you are running.

“I have never heard these characters in power, coming to tell Nigerians, that this is the type of capitalist system we are running because they are ignorant, they don’t even know the type of capitalism they are running.

Sule who is also a National Trustee of ASUU said, “The capitalist system you find in the United States of America and the United Kingdom or Australia; is the classical form of a capitalist economy, in which the rich can accumulate wealth, without limit.

“At the end of the day, you see a sharp difference between the working people and the extremely rich ones.

“That is why, irrespective of the richness of the United States of America, they still have people who are homeless, who can’t feed themselves among others; but what they do is to ensure that in that economic system they create room for subsidy, in which they will try to prevent revolution from happening, knowing that if they allow it to some certain extent there will be revolution.

Speaking on the Nigeria economic system, the ASUU National Trustee asked, “what type of capitalism is Nigeria practising? If you ask President Muhammadu Buhari today, he doesn’t know, neither does Osinbajo know.

He said idiots in politics mean people who are, “extremely parochial, self-centred, very greedy, they don’t have a societal project in their mind, don’t initiate anything for development; so when you have leaders that have these characteristics, they are idiots”.

Also speaking, President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi said the proliferation of Private Universities in Nigeria by the political class has reduced the quality of education in the country.

Ogunyemi noted that the political class has deliberately refused to address the neglect of infrastructural deficit in Nigeria Universities but prefer to establish private Institutions to kill public Universities.

“Not only students are suffering the infrastructural deficit in the universities but the lecturers are also suffering because our salaries have been amputated and devalued by the Federal Government for about 11 years”, he lamented.