EditorialTHEWILL EDITORIAL: FG Must Accede to ASUU’s Demands

THEWILL EDITORIAL: FG Must Accede to ASUU’s Demands

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The news that the lingering strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) may soon be suspended is a welcome development. Last Thursday, President Muhammadu Buhari appealed to the striking university lecturers to return to work in order to pave the way for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. He also appealed to students to be patient and exercise restraint to enable the Federal Government resolve the issue within the available resources.

For many Nigerians, the persistent strike action has become not only worrisome but also embarrassing.

The decision by the clearly frustrated lecturers to extend their industrial action by yet another three months, two weeks ago, had been a source of great concern to not only the parents whose children and wards have been at home for well over three months, but also the Federal Government.

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The students, who have been at home for the fourth month running, also decided to take their destiny in their hands by giving an ultimatum to the Federal Government to respond to ASUU’s demands within seven days. Matching their words with actions, the students started a series of protests across the country, blocking major roads and highways, as they threatened that the two major political parties – All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would not hold their presidential primaries in Abuja if the Federal Government fails to accede to the demands of ASUU.

It is sad and quite unbelievable that what started just as a warning strike by the lecturers was allowed to develop into a full-blown strike due to the nonchalance and lackadaisical attitude of government officials who, until recently, have refused to sincerely attend to the genuine demands of the university teachers.

Preferring to focus more on their political ambitions rather than the interests of Nigerian students, the immediate past Minister for Labour, Chris Ngige, and his Education counterpart, Adamu Adamu, felt the lecturers were asking for too much.

Treating the university teachers as beggars and not caring a hoot about what happened to the thousands of students in the public universities, the political elite continued, shamelessly, in their permutations and scheming for the next elections.

While the salaries of the striking lecturers have been stopped by the Federal Government, the political class and their accomplices were junketing around, engaging in a political bazaar, raising over N40 billion in less than two weeks from Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms into various political offices. This is shocking and surprising against the Federal Government’s claims that it is broke, more so, as some former ministers featured prominently in the bazaar, dishing out a whopping N100 million for Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms .

We want to stress the need for the Federal Government to place great priority on education, especially that of the younger generation of Nigerians, because they are the future of the country. Education is a right and not a privilege. The standard benchmark of the national budget to be dedicated to education as recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, is between 15 to 20 per cent.

Unfortunately, despite all assurances from successive administrations, Nigeria committed a paltry 5.8 per cent of its 2021 national budget to education, increasing it to a meagre 7.9 per cent in 2022. A situation where our students, especially in public institutions, would remain idle at home for several months because of ASUU strike is therefore totally unacceptable.

We are, however, glad that President Buhari is now showing some concern towards resolving the crisis, though coming a bit late. ASUU had claimed that the President’s earlier directive that government officials responsible should open talks with the lecturers’ union had not been obeyed to the letters hence its refusal to call off the strike .

We are also glad that Buhari’s appeal is coming just as the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) has started disbursing N642,848,138:00 to each of the beneficiary universities for the 2022 interventions, while benefitting polytechnics and colleges of education will get the sums of N396,780,086:00 and N447, 758, 804: 00 each, respectively. The Federal Government should fulfill its side of whatever agreements have been reached with the lecturers.

The effects of the frequent disturbance of academic calendars are there for all to see in the quality of graduates being churned out of our public universities and other tertiary institutions every year. A nation that plays with the destiny of its youth is planning for its doom.

Nigeria has already entered the inglorious world record with the number of out-of-school children in the country. We cannot afford to add the total destruction of our public university system to our list of woes. Posterity would never forgive any administration that has a hand in this kind of misfortune. We therefore call for the fast tracking of the negotiations so that the lecturers and students could return to school as soon as possible.

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