Federal Govt Not Showing Commitment To End Strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that the Nigerian government was not showing any sign of commitment to resolve the issues that led to its ongoing strike.

The national president of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this on Tuesday while speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s breakfast show, Sunrise Daily, monitored by our reporter.

Osodeke said some of the issues of concern include the funding of universities, autonomy of the system and other general issues.

He said, “Nothing really has happened since we declared the strike. The federal government has not shown any sign to resolve these issues.

“We did not have any meaningful meeting with any of their organ, neither the Ministry of Labour nor the Ministry of Education. Nothing significant has happened since we declared the strike about nine weeks ago which means this system is not interested in education.”

The ASUU further said in 2009, the Union signed agreement with the federal government that would have changed the trajectory of tertiary institutions in the country but nothing has been done to implement it.

He continued; “We have been pushing this government to implement the the agreement but it does not believe in what was in the agreement so they set up a committee to look at the state of the universities and they came up with need assessment reports that was very damning where in some universities we have their laboratories decay, we have a lecture theatre where you have some students sitting on the floor, while lectures are ongoing.

“We have students hanging on the windows and having lectures and some standing. Based on that, our committee recommended that the federal government should pump in the sum of N1.3 trillion to bring our education up to date but surprisingly enough 13years after, apart from the N200 billion released in 2014 by regime of president Jonathan, nothing significant has been released in the past seven years.”