The proposed Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Federal University Aba, has been described as an overdrive of sycophancy and building of a needless, meaningless and absolutely indecorous personality cult around the person of Tinubu by the Federal House of Representatives.
National Coordinator, HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA
Pro-democracy advocate, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) criticized the lawmakers for considering establishing another university in Nigeria despite the country having over 270 universities.
Sponsored by the Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu, and eight others, the proposed legislation titled a bill for “An Act to Establish The Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal University of Nigerian Languages, Aba; To Make Comprehensive Provisions For Its Due Management and Administration and For Related Matters”, the bill proposed that the university be cited in Aba, Abia, the home state of the deputy speaker.
As of September 2024, there are over 270 universities in Nigeria. Of the total count, 149 were private while state and federal universities added up to 63 and 62, respectively.
Stakeholders in the education sector are worried over the proliferation of tertiary institutions in the country.
They believe that federal and state governments and parliaments should adopt a more rational, scientific, and development-oriented approach to higher education rather than establishing more universities.
HURIWA however condemns the proliferation of federal government agencies and educational institutions at a time of severe funding challenges, unprecedented poverty and the costs of living crises in Nigeria just as HURIWA said the wrong-headed idea behind naming the university after the visitor to the federal university made nonsense of the entire exercise and has demonstrated that the only major reason for making such a proposal by the Deputy Speaker of the house of Representatives was to ingratiate himself and curry political favours from president Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
National Coordinator, HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: “Because the proposal for a federal university to be named Bola Ahmed Tinubu doesn’t serve any public good but is a project to massage the ego of president Tinubu and score cheap political advantages by the proponent and his acolytes, we hereby demand that this idea be perished and consigned to the dustbin of history where it rightly belongs. We are also bothered that the Deputy Speaker is working against the public demand that government should run a lean government and reduce the costs of governance by his his voyage of sycophancy of proposing a university to be named after President Bola Tinubu during president Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.”
The group also criticized the decision to locate a golden status of the wife of President Bola Tinubu at the Obafemi Awolowo University IleIfe in Osun State.
HURIWA described it as hypocritical and an intolerable joke,
On Friday, October 11, 2024, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi unveiled a 2.7 km Senator Oluremi Tinubu way, and a grand pavilion and monument at the University campus.
The Rights group said the traditional ruler doesn’t own the University and therefore it was wrong to have domesticated his ‘heroine worshipping’ edifices at a federal university rather than at his palace.
“This is unacceptable and condemnable to put it mildly and by the way, if we may ask, what particular act of heroism has the wife of the current president achieved far better than the mother of Fela Anikulapo Kuti Mrs Ransome Kuti, to deserve those ‘personality cult symbols’ domesticated in a national educational institution? Mrs. Ransome Kuti at least was the first Nigerian woman to drive a car and was a human rights activist all through her life until the military dictators in the late 70’s assassinated her whilst attempting to kill Fela Anukulapo Kuti. In as much as we don’t have the right to dictate to the Ooni of Ife how to spend his money, we think his decision to locate those projects inside a national university doesn’t sit well with good logic.
