From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives, yesterday, called on the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to honour the terms of agreement they reached in the interest of Nigerian students.
The House, which urged ASUU to call off its one month warning strike, also mandated its Committees on Labour, Employment and Productivity, and Tertiary Education and Services to interface with the ministries of Labour and Employment and Education to address all outstanding issues.
The committees were equally mandated to interface with civil society organisations, Nigeria Inter-Religious Council, and ASUU to resolve the issues that precipitated the current warning strike by university lecturers.
This followed the adoption of a motion by Dozie Nwankwo, calling the attention of the House to the lingering dispute between the government and ASUU.
Nwankwo, in his motion, expressed dismay that the dispute between the government and ASUU has continued to linger, despite previous efforts to resolve the contending issues.
The lawmaker said the development has led to a one month warning strike declared by the university lecturers on February 4 to compel the government to honour the agreements between them.
He recalled that the last ASUU strike, which lasted from March 2020 to December 2020 inflicted so much pains on students in the country, their parents, as well as affected the education sector.
Nwankwo expressed worry that the “dispute borders on issues like the injection of revitalisation funds, payment of earned academic allowance and the likes that are obtainable in other African countries like Ghana and South Africa.
“The consequences of the strike are embarrassingly becoming too frequent and with consequences too damning to the education sector as one-month action is a too much disruption to an academic calendar.”