The Registrar of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Ishaq Oloyede, yesterday, bemoaned the current strike action embarked on by the members of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

He however described the ongoing industrial action by members of the unions as unnecessary.

Professor Oloyede, who was a former Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin, stated this when the university admission regulatory agency presented multi-billion naira medical equipment to the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) for improved healthcare delivery in the country, in collaboration with a US-based agency, Project Cure.

The JAMB registrar said that incessant strike action by unions in the nation’s tertiary institution was capable of causing irreparable damage on not just the students but also the nation.

Oloyede urged both the government and the unions to find ways of putting an end to the “unnecessary strike action”.

“While acknowledging the fact that the primary responsibility of reasonable (even if not adequate) funding of public health and education institutions lies on the proprietors- the Government, may I seize this opportunity to call on the employers, university-based labour unions to appreciate the irreparable damage of incessant strikes on not just the students but also the nation.”

Oloyede, who said that the intervention of the Board in the area of healthcare delivery was to support government’s efforts aimed at addressing the huge medical infrastructural gap, added that JAMB would continue to prune down its expenses through prudent management, adoption of relevant cost-saving technology, and other efficiency-strategies to free up resources to support major stakeholders such as the tertiary health and educational institutions in order to uplift the health and educational institutions.

He said that the tertiary health institutions’ hospital equipment intervention was for 12 benefiting health facilities in all the six geopolitical zones in the country, for the benefit of the Nigerian people.

The equipment include angle poise lamp, ventilator, consumables, mattress, OG couch, gynecology chair, treatment table, treadmill machine, crutches, ICU beds, urinary catheters, defibrillator machines, laparoscopy machines, needle and syringes, wheel chairs, oxygen concentrator, suction machines, endoscopy machines, among others.

The JAMB registrar, who urged individuals and corporate bodies to imbibe the spirit of volunteerism and sacrifice and rededicate themselves to promotion of the best interest of humanity through facilitation of physical infrastructure and enhanced capacity-building projects in inadequately funded public education and health institutions, chastised Nigerian politicians who paid N100 million for expression of interest and nomination forms for the 2023 presidential race.

“If the people, who had paid the N100m to buy nomination and expression of interest for the presidential election had done that for the nation’s health interventions, many people would have been praying for them. I don’t know who would be praying for them now,” he said.

Also speaking, a former chairman of the Board, a renowned medical doctor, Dr. Emmanuel Ndukwe, described the medical intervention as the beginning of the journey towards checking medical tourism in Nigeria.

He also charged the university teaching hospital to put the equipment to good use in the service of humanity.

In his speech, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the UITH, Professor Yussuf Abudullah, said that the provision would go a long way to assuage and relieve the management of the hospital financially.

The CMD also said that the intervention would help to provide necessary services to our numerous clientele.

“This is a novel and noble idea capable of helping the Nigerian masses. This is a happy event for me and the hospital. We are very happy to have it as the very first hospital to receive the equipment and to be commissioned among the 12 beneficiary institutions,” Abudullah said.