Obi promises to give loans to students, make universities autonomous, end strikes

The Labour Party (LP) Presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has assured that if elected President in 2023, his administration will end perennial strike actions that threaten to cripple the federal universities in the country.

Obi who was speaking at a town hall meeting with youths in Port Harcourt also promised to increase education funding, make universities autonomous and grant loans to students.

He further disclosed that as president, students will not stay beyond their course time in schools.

He said, “I will not allow them to make your stay 8 years for a 5-year course. 5 years will be 5 years. If I have a problem with ASUU it is between me and them. You shouldn’t suffer for our disagreement.”

The former Anambra State governor maintained that as a way out of the current logjam between the government and university authorities, “Universities should be able to manage their resources, so they don’t have to shut down.

“So many things are not adding up but I will sit down with ASUU and we will discuss.

While adding that he would embark on physical tours to tertiary institutions to make them work, the LP presidential flag bearer regretted that governments that refuse to recognise the impact of education on development are doomed.

“I assure you that when I become president I will visit at least 10 universities in a year. I visited over 500 secondary schools when I was a governor in Anambra. And all their school prefects have my phone number and I deal with them directly,” he explained.

“In my manifesto, I said we will fund education, we will increase the funding. We will invest in education because the greatest investment any society can do is education. The more educated a society is, the more developed they are.

“You continue to talk about physical infrastructure when you have not built the human infrastructure, which is education. So we will fund education at the tertiary level through collaborations, the government will bring the money and we can also get some corporations to support and we will do student loans,” he emphasized.

Obi stressed that his government would be a youth and women’s government as the “old people will be there as advisers, they will guide us, we will respect them but the youth will spearhead it.”