ABUJA - Senate of the Federal Republic has mandated its president
and chairman, Sen. David Mark to engage President Goodluck Jonathan and
leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities with a view to
bringing to an end the protracted strike action of the academics that
has entered it’s fourth month.
Also, the Senate appealed to the striking lecturers to suspend the strike and return to work to prevent further devaluation of the country’s educational fortunes.
The Senate chamber further encourage its Committee on Education to liaise with the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC), the ASUU and all other relevant stakeholders to proffer lasting solution to stem further strikes in the education sector.
This is even as Senate President David Mark in his remark preceding the resolutions at yesterday plenary, “begged” ASUU members to return to classroom while dialogue on their grievances is on-going.
He stressed that “as long as we continue the dialogue we will find solution. While this is going on, we should avoid inflammatory statement, let me appeal for understanding of both parties; let us shift ground in our understanding; if we continue to dig in, we won’t find solution”.
I want to beg the ASUU to return to classroom. They have made their point. The more they stay put on their strike they would begin to lose sympathy; in this matter, there is no victor no vanquished”, Sen. Mark continued.
Moreso, the senate president stressed the importance of education more than any other thing to national development, stressing, “our national development must be hinged on education; ab-initio people must be told the truth what can be accomplished and what cannot be accomplished”.
The Senate President however bemoaned what he described as inefficiency of federal government negotiators whose ignorance “ASUU simply took advantage of” and made spurious and impossible demands that have put the country on hold.
He noted that while the Senate Committee on Education chairman, Sen. Uche Chukwumerije, was reading out items on the agreement between the federal government and ASUU, he had forever thought of them as mere notes than they were said to have been truly endorsed by the government negotiators.
Earlier in his contribution to the debate, Sen. Chukwumerije enumerated the items on the agreement to include: Teaching Practice Allowance, External Excess Workload Allowance, Sick Leave Allowance, Post Graduate Allowance, Sabbatical Leave Allowance, Work Injury Leave Allowance, Housing Loan, Car Loan, increase of retirement age for all categories of lecturers to 70 years, Pension, and Funding the Universities among others.
Also in his comment, Sen. Ita Enang argued that since the money was not appropriated for in the current Budget, it was absolutely impossible for the federal government to pay the money as demanded by ASUU, stressing, “no money can be paid without necessary appropriation.
He further argued that Trade Unions Act section 1, proves that the demand of ASUU has gone beyond trade unionism to political, adding that for ASUU to conscript all lecturers willy nilly into their strike has made them dictatorial, and have committed criminal breach of laws and order.
Moreover, Sen. Enang aggregated all the demands of trade union organizations in the country to be over 500% of the national Budget, asserting “a person employed under a law is bound by the law and he cannot be a breaker
Ahmed Lawan noted that the Peoples Democratic Party has failed Nigeria, while Sen. Danjuma Goje submitted that the N500 billion ASUU demand is affordable and should be paid them.
Presenting the motion earlier, which he co-sponsored with 38 members, Senate Leader Victor Ndoma-Egba observed that despite several negotiations between the striking lecturers and representatives of the FG coupled with intervention of prominent Nigerians for the parties to reach a compromise, stressing, “the strike has persisted with no sign of a truce”.
He was disturbed 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.
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