The Federal Government will meet the Academic Staff Union of
Universities, ASUU, today on the ongoing strike embarked on by
university lecturers over the non- implementation of the 2009 FG/ASUU
agreement, which has been on for weeks. The meeting comes following the denial of Minister of Labour and
Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu of a newspaper report that the Federal
Government agreement with ASUU could not work. The minister said he never made such a statement and that he only
appealed to the union to return to the classrooms while negotiations
continued. Last week’s meeting of the two sides with the Senate and House of
Representatives Joint Committee on Education had ended in deadlock as
both sides seems to be ready to compromise their stands. The two groups
were told by the lawmakers, to go back and review their positions, while
they choose a later date to reconvene. Fielding questions from journalists, yesterday, Minister of
Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Rufa’I, said that the Federal Government
had no other option than to meet with the union to resolve the crisis,
so students can return to school. “Government has no option but to make efforts to resolve ASUU crisis.
Mr. President is concerned, everybody is concerned, definitely, efforts
will have to be made to have students back in classrooms. “So we are pleading with our colleagues in ASUU to call off the
strike but we are meeting with them, we are meeting tomorrow (today). Lamenting the state of Nigeria’s economy, President of Academic Staff
Union of Universities, ASUU, Dr. Nasir Fagge, said Nigeria’s economy
had been taken over by Chinese, as leaders in Nigeria have refused to
provide quality education to the people, while the Chinese government
trained its people in all sectors with the necessary facilities. Fagge said Nigeria’s economy will continue going down the sorry path
it is on now, except leaders of the country provided universities with
adequate facilities to give qualitative education to the youths. “The thing about it is that, if other countries are investing about
28-30 per cent of their annual budget in education, typically Ghana–even
this year, Ghana has committed 28 per cent of its total budget to
education, if they can do it, why not Nigeria. “Is it because we are under the dictates of IMF and World Bank, don’t
we want to do what is right, must our children continue to go to
Ghanaian university for education, must our people be leaving our
country, be brain-drained to other countries to go and develop their
economies, must we continue this way? “Even now, what is happening is that the Chinese have taken over our
economy simply because they have trained their people, they have
educated their people and their people can compete any where in the
World that is why our President is going to China to go and sign MoU
(Memorandum of Understanding). “Why cant we do the same, why cant we train our people and give them
quality education so that we will also be exporting them to go and carry
out assignments in other countries and then bring foreign exchange for
our country and then we will not need to be importing people to come and
do some sundry projects in our country. “Most of the key contracts now are being forwarded to Chinese
companies; all our companies are down simply because we have not paid
high premium to our education sector that is what we are saying. Are we
happy with what we are producing as graduates? We are not that is what
we are crying out for. “Let people understand that it is the pride of an intellectual to
produce a well rounded intellectual who is even better than himself, but
that is not what we are having. We are having people because we don’t
have the facilities to give them state of-the-art training and we are
crying out and people are telling us all sorts of things,” Fagge told
Vanguard. He however expressed optimism that the agreement the union entered into with the federal government would be implemented. “This thing that they are saying agreement cannot be implemented, we
have heard it before. Prof. Ben Nwabueze was always in the media when he
was the Minister of Education saying that it was an agreement of
imperfect obligation,” he said. The outcome of today’s meeting will determine the fate of students who bear the brunt of strike actions like this.
