The National President, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, has decried the recruitment system in the universities, regretting that many people not qualified to teach had found their way into the system.
Ogunyemi, who made this known when he appeared on the News Agency of Nigeria Forum in Abuja on Sunday, added that it was not a crime for lecturers to teach in two different universities.
He said, “Some lecturers have no business in the classrooms, but they found their way in due to political interference. You find that some lecturers probably have no business being in the universities but you know politics has done so much damage to us that sometimes merit is sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and political connections.
“We hope that we shall restore the credibility of the system as we have been trying to argue over the years. A key step to achieving that is for government to create the enabling environment for us to go back to the renegotiation table.”
Ogunyemi noted that such recruitment had done a lot of damage to the university system as not all people in the class were able to teach.
“Teaching is all about passion and not about preference of any sort. It is something natural,” he said.
On why students do not have access to current publications by lecturers, Ogunyemi said facilities for conducting cutting edge research were in a shambles.
He, however, said that lecturers were doing their best.
