ASUU strike: SERAP petitions UN over FG’s refusal to honour 2009 agreement ...Read more

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, has sent a petition against the Federal Government to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights over the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.

The petition was sent to the committee through the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay, on October 25, 2013 and signed by its Executive Director, Mr. Adetokunbo Mumuni.

SERAP described the inability of the government to honour the 2009 agreement it signed with ASUU as a fundamental breach.

While noting that the pact seeks to improve the governance structures and funding for the operation of universities across the country, conditions of service for members of the country’s universities remained poor.

The group asked the UN Committee to “demand that the Nigerian government should urgently and fully implement its agreement with ASUU and ensure sufficient funding of universities across the country.”

“The Committee should put pressure on the government to promote, protect and fulfil the right to education for the sake of millions of Nigerian children that continue to be denied this fundamental human right.

“As the UN Committee has stated, states must take deliberate, concrete and targeted steps as clearly as possible towards meeting the obligations recognised in the covenant. But the persistent refusal by the government to sufficiently fund the country’s universities, and honour its own agreement to ASUU is a deliberate retrogressive measure, and shows lack of good faith,” it said.