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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party Peter Obi has challenged the federal government to rise to the occasion and resolve the six months old nationwide strike embarked upon by university lecturers under the umbrella of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Obi in his verified Twitter account said it’s unconscionable, worrisome and unacceptable that the federal government will allow such an industrial action to become almost intractable to the detriment of millions of students.
He suggested that it’s time for the federal government to engage in collaborative negotiations with ASUU, and in good faith ensure the strike is resolved as soon as possible so that campuses can be reopened and students return to classes.
Recall that members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of ASUU on Monday supported the decision for an indefinite strike after they claimed that federal government was unwilling to meet their demands which led to the strike in February.
ASUU President Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, in the communique released at the end of the NEC, said: “For the avoidance of doubt, none of the issues that forced our Union to resume the suspended strike as listed in the December 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA) has been satisfactorily addressed by the Government to date.
“The draft renegotiated FGN/ASUU agreement (second draft) remains unsigned; the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) has not been adopted and deployed to replace the discredited Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS); and the White Papers on Visitation Panels to Federal Universities, if ready as claimed by Government more than six months ago, are nowhere to be found.
“Similarly, Government has not delivered on the promised balance of one tranche of the revitalization fund more than one year after, the outstanding two tranches of the Earned Academic Allowances (EAA) have not been released; and nothing has since happened on the promised support for amendment to the law of the National Universities Commission (NUC) to stem the tide of proliferation of universities, especially by the state governments.”
Prof Osodeke said that the NEC was utterly disappointed in representatives of government, especially the Minister of Education, for the deliberate falsehood and misrepresentation of facts aimed at scoring cheap political gains. It is disheartening to imagine that a Minister whose responsibility it is to resolve the crisis can overnight turn around to lead in this ignoble enterprise of distorting facts and misleading Nigerians.
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“The disdain with which the Minister of Education handled questions about the ongoing ASUU strike at his recent Press Conference at State House lends credence to the widespread suspicion that the current Government never believed in saving public universities from the misfortunes that have befallen Nigeria’s public primary and secondary schools.”
Meanwhile, the President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Sunday Asefon, accused the striking ASUU members of a plot to destroy public universities through their recent actions, particularly the recently declared indefinite strike.
NANS said it has taken time to review the decision of ASUU to declare an indefinite strike, and considered it not only unpatriotic, unnecessary but wicked, and definitely not in the interest of Nigeria nor the tertiary education system in Nigeria.
Its President, Sunday Asefon, in a statement, queried the rationale behind ASUU’s decision the extend the strike after their demands have been met by the government except for the demand for payment of six months’ salary arrears.
“Such a decision was easy for ASUU because many of their leaders do not have their wards in public universities, and they still have employment at various private universities around the country, and as such not affected by their attempt to collapse the sector for their selfish and inconsiderate gains,” he said.
He said that ASUU initially succeeded in masquerading the strike as an action in the interest of the tertiary education system in Nigeria and in the interest of the teeming Nigerian students, but recent events indicated that ASUU has an ulterior motive which is to collapse university education system in Nigeria, and systematically promote private universities where many of them have their children, stakes, and perhaps where they receive payment for the job of collapsing public universities in Nigeria.
He called on the federal government to investigate the leadership of ASUU with the aim of unravelling their motivation for their “insistence on collapsing the public university system in Nigeria.
“We condemn in totality, the insistence of ASUU on payment of six months arrears for the entire period of the strike before they can call off the strike. This demand is not only insensitive, it is selfish, inconsiderate, and uncharitable.”
