THE House of Representatives yesterday urged the Federal Executive Council, FEC, to formalise the establishment of the nine new Federal Universities by presenting bills for their estalishment to the National Assembly for enactment into laws.

The Federal Executive Council purportedly established nine Federal universities in some states of Nigeria recently including Kogi, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Ekiti and others. The aim, according to the Federal Government was to meet the educational need of the teeming population of the country.

Unfortunately, the FEC did not bring any bill to the National Assembly on the matter to legislate and give the said universities legal backing for legitimate operation.

Disturbed by this seeming negligence and constitutional breach by the Executive, Hon. Faleke James Abiodun, representing Ikeja Federal Constituency of Lagos State, came up with a motion, notifying the Reps of the illegality of the action of FEC and the need for the House to intervene and get the process properly done.

In the motion entitled, "Legal Backing for the Nine (9) newly established Federal Universities", Hon. Faleke Abiodun noted that the FEC’s decision to establish these institutions was informed by the desire to create more room to accommodate more Nigerians to have access to university education and to balance the spread of Federal Universities amongst the states of the Federation.

He however, expressed concern that the universities have no legal backing to regulate the internal and external activities of the universities, which were intended to take off in September, 2011.

He also decried the establishment and operation of the Universities by the Executive arm without an enabling Act of Parliament as an infraction of Section 5 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, as amended; stressing that the process was inchoate.

The politician further expressed concern that the financial implication of establishing and sustaining these universities had never been previewed by the National Assembly as required by section 81 of the 1999 Constitution.

Similarly, the House of Representatives also appealed to the Academic Staff Union of Universities to suspend its on-going warning strike in the interest of the Educational Sector which is already in terrible decadence over the years.

This followed a motion brought by the Chairman, House Committee on Education, Hon. Faruk Lawan under matter of Urgent Public importance, in which the Reps noted that the strike by ASUU would have serious consequences on the sector, if allowed to linger.

Hon Lawan noted that strikes in Nigerian Universities had become rampant and perennial that something needed to be done that would bring about permanent solution to the crisis’.

According to Hon. Lawan, when the Academic Staff Union of Universities and government entered agreement in 2009, it was agreed that corporate organisations would be encouraged to fund research in universities while the retirement age of university lecturers would be raised from 65 to 70 years.

He revealed that though there was an attempt by the Legislature to drive this process further by introducing private member bill which was passed by the two chambers, both ASUU and other stakeholders objected to its signing because, according to Union, the bill did not capture the spirit of the agreement reached by the two parties.

Lawan warned that if the strike is allowed to linger, it would have serious consequences not only on the education sector but also on the psyche of the Nigerian students who are directly affected by the unrest in the universities.

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