Education

Day 50: ASUU, FG Trade Blame Over Lingering Strike

Published

3 years ago

Apr 5, 2022.

Yinka Akanbi

ASUU and the other unions are currently on strike over failure by the Federal Government to honour the various agreements reached with them
ASUU’s strike enters its 50th day on Tuesday

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EKO HOT BLOG reports that the Minister of State for Education, Emeka Nwajiuba, has said striking university workers including the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Joint Action Committee of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Education and Associated Institutions are mean and wicked for shutting down universities across the country.

This is coming as the ASUU’s strike enters its 50th day on Tuesday.

The unions are currently on strike over failure by the Federal Government to honour the various agreements reached with them.

Nwajiuba, in an interview, said it was an act of wickedness for the unions to go on strike for entitlements that the government would still give them.

“… The strike has not produced the money they are asking for, if the money was there they would have been paid the day they started the strike.

“Government has heard them, they are not wrong but the same way government has said they will get the money, for every strike they have embarked on they still get their money but human beings have lost times.

“They are not only being wicked to the government but they are wicked to the human beings that constitute Nigeria,” the PUNCH quoted him as saying.

In his reaction, the National President, ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, wondered why the Federal Government had refused to meet the union’s demand.

“I will not honour people like Nwajiuba with my response. If the government wants the children of the ordinary Nigerian people to have good education like their children who are schooling abroad, they would have resolved the problem within one week.

“Ask Nwajiuba why the Ministry of Education has refused to meet with the ASUU?”

Also, ASUU chairman, University of Lagos, Dr Dele Ashiru, described Nwajiuba’s statement as callous and provocative.

“This is the kind of reaction you get from those who became ministers of the Federal Republic based on quota system. If the minister knows that ASUU would eventually get what it wants why wait until the system is shut down?

FURTHER READING

“Is it sane for the conditions of service of a worker to remain the same in the last 12 years? The remark by the minister is therefore, to say the least, provocative, callous and insensate.

“As for ASUP and COEASU, if they are comfortable with empty promises from an insensitive ruining elite, good for them.”

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