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President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Samson Ayokunle, yesterday said the nationwide strike embarked upon by lecturers under the umbrella of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) would have been averted if lecturers had listened to religious leaders that were making efforts to proffer solutions to the problem.
Ayokunle, who spoke at the opening ceremony of the 2022 first quarterly meeting of the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC), in Abuja, with the theme, ‘Education for Peace and Nation Building’, said if ASUU had exercised little more patient, the issues would have been resolved amicably without industrial disharmony.
He said the religious leaders had approached ASUU leaders on the contentious issues before the nationwide strike pleading for time to persuade the Federal Government to implement the agreements, but before they could conclude consultations with the Federal Government and other stakeholders, ASUU declared strike and withdrew their services nationwide.
He said: “I am not pleased enough with ASUU because they were impatient. Myself (CAN president) and co-chairman of NIREC (sultan) and others went to plead with them. Instead of them to be patient with us to know how far we could go in our efforts, they went ahead with their planned strike while our intervention was going on. To me, that was not respectful enough and that was the reason we left them.”
Ayokunle, who is NIREC co-chairman, challenged the Federal Government and ASUU to find a lasting solution to the ongoing strike so that students of public universities can return to school, expressing fears that desperate politicians might take advantage of the idleness of the students to use them for thuggery and other negative purposes.
“For how long can we continue to allow the impasse between ASUU and the government to continue? Our children are the ones suffering for it and our future because our future are the children. How can they be playing with the future of these children like this?
“The time to recruit our youths from churches and mosque has come. I want to plead with us to appeal to our wards not to allow politicians use them as thugs as election period approaches.
“We need to prevail on them not to avail themselves to be used for such dirty assignments. We should intensify prayers both in the mosque and churches for a better leadership in 2023.”
