Congress for Progressive Change has accused the Presidency of lacking “needed direction and patriotism” to turn things around in the education sector.

The party also wondered why the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, which voted N4bn for the First Lady’s pet-project and increased budget for Vice President’s new home from N9bn to N16bn, could not pay lecturers’ salaries.

Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics are currently on strike following the refusal of the Federal Government to honour agreements reached with their unions on improving their conditions of service.

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Rotimi Fashakin, on Sunday, the CPC said it was “horrified by the ongoing strike”.

The CPC said, “The attendant disruption of academic calendar in the nation’s universities at this time of our national development is, to us as patriots, very disheartening indeed.”

It added that the demand by the ASUU “should be a no-brainer for any administration that seeks to radically improve the national educational standard. But we have seen that, over the years, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party has shown a consistency in exacerbating the falling standard of education in the country.”

The CPC noted that between 2000 and 2010, the average allocation to education by the successive PDP administrations was 8.12 per cent.

It said, “It is therefore not surprising that in 2010, there was a meteoric rise in fees in tertiary institutions across the country and that no Nigerian university could be found among the first 5,000 in the world or the first 50 in Africa and over 12 million children of school age were out of school.

“Furthermore, there were 98 per cent and 74 per cent mass failure in the 2009 National Examination Council November/December Senior Secondary Certificate Examination and 2010 May/June West African Examination Council examination respectively!

“As a party, we have noted that even the military regime before the infestation of PDP rule in Nigeria had an average of 12.87 per cent in sectoral allocation to education between 1994 and 1996.

“While the PDP administrations had been withholding the badly needed investment in education, Nigeria’s fellow English-speaking West African neighbour, Ghana, has consistently shown commitment to improved education within its boundaries. In 2012, Ghana’s allocation of 31 per cent of its national expenditure to education paled into insignificance the paltry 8.43 per cent that Nigeria – under President Goodluck Jonathan – spent on education.

“Should it therefore surprise anyone why Nigerian students have opted for Ghanaian tertiary institutions in recent times? The staggering $500m (N81.5bn) that left the shores of the land in 2012 because of money spent abroad by Nigerians for education should be a cause for worry to all well-meaning Nigerians.”