TELL Magazine

Oladipupo Fashina, former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU says Nigerians must take up the initiative to fight for freedom. In his keynote address at this year’s Gani Fawehinmi Annual Scholarship Awards. The man who led a radical campaign for university autonomy and quality education for many years said to leave the struggle for a better Nigeria in the hands of the political class is to surrender freedom to the very group that wants people caged. He, therefore, implored Nigerians to remember the principles of Fawehinmi who said that education, in fact, free education, is a right of the people, against which they should not bargain. He said, “Nigeria does not need an education system that simply replicates the systemic class inequality, and class domination: Nigeria needs a liberating education system.” He equated this with the political system that subjugates African countries to the western economy, thus forcing the continent onto it’s knees. He, therefore, said that Africans must choose between freedom and a continuation of the “discredited neo-liberalism “. Fashina, who retired from the Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife some years ago , is the chairman of the scholarship award board.