Playing games with ASUU strike, What next?

BY ADELEYE KUNLE Y

THE Muhammadu Buhari administration and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, have turned our public university students’ five-month stay at home into a game of hide and seek. The prospect of our universities reopening for academic purposes has dimmed even further.

After numerous verbal warnings, ASUU finally went on strike for one month on February 16, 2022. When the Federal Government did not respond, the Union declared the current indefinite strike after extending its warning strike for two months.

Rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue with the Union to resolve the impasse, Dr. Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, and his counterpart, now former Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, came up with N100 million each to purchase All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential nomination forms.

These were ministers who should have resigned or been fired long ago for failing to resolve the ASUU strike on their watch. They added salt to the masses’ wounds by running for their party’s presidential nomination.

In his “enough is enough” call for ASUU to return to work in Daura during the recent Sallah holidays, Buhari warned the Union that its strike would have “generational consequences” on families, the educational system, and the country’s future development.

This statement clearly intended to shift the moral burden of the ASUU strike to university lecturers. President Buhari and his All Progressives Congress, APC, were given the mandate to solve this problem, among others, the last time we checked.

After blaming previous administrations for their failures, including the inability to end the periodic ASUU strikes, the seven-year-old Buhari administration has only exacerbated the situation. The government of Umar Yar’Adua signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with ASUU in October 2009. It was intended to give our universities a major facelift while also providing lecturers with a conducive environment for maximum output.

The inability of subsequent regimes to meet lecturers’ demands sparked this series of ASUU strikes. The Buhari administration signed another Memorandum of Agreement, or MOA, with ASUU in 2020. This appeared to confirm its willingness to meet the Union’s demands. The government now claims that it lacks the necessary funds. So, why sign the MOU?

It is instructive that, with 10 months left on his term, the president used the same occasion on which he blamed ASUU to admit that the demands of his office were “too tough” and that he was “eager to go.” We cannot wait another ten months for our children to return to school. We gave Buhari authority. We will hold him accountable.

The post ASUU Strike Playing Games appeared first on Track News.