In a bid to find a solution to the lingering strike by the Academic
Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, which has entered its fourth month,
the Senate yesterday unanimously elected the Senate President, David
Mark, to lead the National Assembly negotiation team to mediate between
the Federal Government and the union.
In a three-point resolution, the upper legislative chamber also
appealed to ASUU to suspend the four month strike and return to classes,
just as it mandated its Committee on Education to continue to liaise
with the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities
Commission, NUC, ASUU and all relevant stakeholders to proffer lasting
solution to stem further strikes in the education sector.
All these happened following the debate on a motion sponsored by the
Senate Leader, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba (Cross River Central),
supported by 108 other senators and entitled, “Appeal to ASUU to call
off the strike action and return to work.”
The Senate is made up of 109 members, meaning all the lawmakers endorsed the motion.
To further demonstrate the commitment of the lawmakers to ending the
strike action by the university dons, the motion was the only issue the
senators deliberated upon during its plenary sitting yesterday.
This was as the lawmakers made a passionate appeal to ASUU to listen
to the voice of reason and return to the classrooms to resume work in
the interest of all Nigerians, especially the students and their
parents.
Mark in a very passionate and emotional appeal said: “I want to
appeal to ASUU, in fact let me even use the word, I want to beg ASUU on
behalf of the Senate that they should resume and go back to work. They
have made a strong case, their position is obvious now and we can now
see the consequences of their action. I will personally beg them if that
is the word that will help them go back to work.”
The Senate President urged both the Federal Government and ASUU to
refrain from viewing the issue from the point of view of winners and
losers, and stressed that the issue has to do with the interest of the
entire nation.
“There is no winner, there is no loser in this exercise; as long as
the strike continues, nobody will win and everybody will lose. Look at
it from the perspective that ASUU will win or the executive will win, we
will be missing the point completely. It is not a question of a winner
or loser, all of us will lose; ASUU will lose, the country will lose,
and we all will lose and we will not want to find ourselves in that kind
of situation,” he enthused.
Mark also used the occasion to lampoon members of the delegation of
the Federal Government that signed the 2009 agreement with
representatives of ASUU, describing them as those who could hardly
distinguish their left from their right.
He also chided representatives of ASUU for taking advantage of the
weak government representatives to the agreement to enter into an
understanding that from beginning was obviously going to be
unimplementable.
“Looking at the agreement that was signed by the Federal Government, I
was wondering whether this was actually signed or whether it was a
proposal. It only showed the level of the people the executive sent to
go and negotiate on their behalf. Abinitio, people must be told the
truth; what can be accomplished and what cannot be accomplished.
“If a leader said I am going to accomplish this, he is duty and
morally bound to honour it. Even if you decided immediately after that
we cannot accomplish it, I think it is proper to go back and start
renegotiating. But if you prolong it on the basis that well you are
going to honour it or you are not going to honour it, it does not
portray us in good light. This is where the Federal Government ought to
have called all those who were involved in the agreement.
“On the other hand, ASUU simply took advantage of the ignorance of
those who were sent and simply allowed this agreement to go on. They
found that those who were sent there simply did not know their left from
their right and they just went ahead, and I think that is not just
fair. ASUU is an organisation in Nigeria and they are not going to
another country to implement this piece of paper. It was obvious to me
that as soon as they concluded they knew this as a difficult thing for
them to implement,” Mark said.
All the senators who contributed to the debate on the motion made
passionate appeal to the university lecturers to see reason and call off
the strike in the interest of Nigerians.
In his lead presentation, Ndoma-Egba observed that the four-month
strike action by ASUU has paralysed academic activities in the nation’s
public universities and rendered students of those institutions
redundant.
He further observed that while the Federal Government may have
released the sum of N100bn for infrastructure development in the
respective universities and N3bn for accumulate allowances of lecturers;
the striking lecturers have rejected the gesture as being grossly
inadequate to meet their demands.
The lawmaker observed that despite several negotiations between the
striking lecturers and representatives of the Federal Government,
coupled with the intervention of eminent Nigerians for the parties to
reach a compromise, the strike has persisted with no sign of a truce.
His worry was that this was a strike too many and that the entire
education sector was grinding to a halt, considering that not only is
ASUU on strike, the Academic Staff of Union of Polytechnics, ASUP, is on
strike and the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union, COEASU,
recently embarked on a seven-day warning strike, all separately pressing
for demands not unconnected with funding.
The lawmaker said that the strike action has taken a dangerous
dimension, with students engaging in all forms of anti-social vices, a
development that may compound the precarious security situation in the
country.
The Deputy President, Ike Ekweremadu, noted that the Senate had on
several occasions in the past intervened when the country was heading
towards destruction and expressed the confidence that the red chamber
has the capacity to resolve the current strike action as it had done in
the past.
In his contributions, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Education,
Uche Chukwumerije had appraised the senators of the contents of the 2009
agreement and the efforts made so far in meeting some of the points.
He condemned the insincerity of ASUU to acknowledge the increased
funding of the Federal Government to the education sector as well as the
tenacious clinging by ASUU to the 2009 agreement as if nothing else
mattered.
Senator Ita Enang wondered why ASUU should expect the Federal
Government to commit to spending from the federal budget without such
expenditure being appropriated by the National Assembly, stressing that,
“When we say that the President should agree to pay N5bn yearly to
ASUU, under what subhead should the money be charged?”
He stated that the entire matter of the ASUU should not be laid on
the table of the executive alone, and that the agreement must be excised
upon appropriation.
The lawmaker was of the opinion that most of the demands of ASUU fall
outside the purview of trade union and encroached on the nation’s
economy and are also political.
While appealing to the striking university dons to sheath their
swords, Enang made the point that if all the sectors of the nation
decide to go on strike at the same time as ASUU has done, then the
economy of the country will collapse.
Also yesterday, President Goodluck Jonathan again admonished the lecturers to allow reason to prevail by calling off the strike.
This is even as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin,
Prof. Abdulganiyu Ambali pleaded with Nigerian university graduates
seeking ‘golden fleece’ abroad to always endeavour to come back home to
develop Nigeria.
President Jonathan, who spoke through Education Minister, Mr. Nyesom
Wike, at the 29th Convocation Ceremony of the University of Ilorin also
called on the university teachers to join hands with the government in
turning the country’s universities to centres of excellence.
The president added that to prove government’s commitment to the
university sector, his administration allocated a sum of N55.74bn to it
this year alone.
Meanwhile, the planned public awareness rally by ASUU, University of
Uyo branch was stalled yesterday by the Akwa Ibom State Police Command.
The university’s gate from Ikpa road was barricade by police vehicles numbering about four.
Led by its branch chairman, Dr. Nwachukwu Ayim, the peaceful march
was halted by the police just outside the school gate at the Town Campus
thereby causing gridlock along the major and busy Ikpa road.
However, this barricade did not deter the ASUU members from singing
their solidarity songs and displaying their pamphlets and placards to
motorists, tricycle riders and passersby.
According to Ayim, the rally was planned as part of efforts by the body to safeguard the university system from total collapse.
One of the posters read, “Education must be save, education must not die, united we stand divided we die.”
He said their initial plan was to go to every nook and cranny of Akwa
Ibom State to distribute handbills and materials to educate the public
on the pathetic state of Nigerian universities and the reason the union
embarked on strike in the first instance.
According to him, Nigerian universities are the worst funded in the
world, stressing that the nation spends only one per cent of its Gross
Domestic Product, GDP, on education compared to other poorer countries
like Botswana (7.8%), Burkina Faso (3.5%), Ghana (8.2%) and Togo (5.5%).
He further explained that lecturers are on strike because they are
tired of being party to producing half-baked graduates whose training
and facilities for their training simply do not measure up with
international standards.
The Police Public Relations Officer, John Patrick, when contacted
could not comment on why the police had to prevent the lecturers from
embarking on the protest.
Read Next...
No comments:
Post a Comment