Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said Nigeria has the potential to produce vaccine for the treatment of COVID-19 if the education sector had been duly funded on all levels.
Abiodun Ogunyemi, ASUU president, said this in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun, while leading members of the association to donate 1,000 pieces of 125ml bottled hand sanitisers to the state government.
He said there is a need to do more in the country’s educational sector by heavily investing in education.
According to him, this would have helped Nigeria in producing quality medical and behavioural scientists, who can spearhead search for vaccine to be used in treating the virus.
He added that Nigeria should learn from the pandemic by investing in education which would yield immeasurable dividends.
Ogunyemi stressed that;
For instance, conscious and determined investment in university education at national and sub-national levels would give our country quality medical scientists, behavioural scientists, creative scholars and other creams of informed citizens who can respond intelligently to challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ASUU boss explained that to achieve better results, Nigerian governments at the federal and state levels need to work with public intellectuals and patriotic trade unions like the association.
This is coming against the backdrop of several claims by ASUU that the country’s educational sector had remained largely underfunded.
This claim had led the academic body on March 9 to declare an ongoing strike to protest the Federal Government’s failure to meet the union’s demands aimed at rejigging the country’s education sector.
