Ibraheem Musa
6 July 2009
Kaduna — Increasing lecturers' salaries as well as funding for the education sector which are the two outstanding demands of the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities(ASUU) are critical to the resolution of on-going indefinite strike action by university lecturers, Comrade Isa Aremu, the Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress(NLC) said yesterday.
Comrade Aremu who advised the Federal Government to urgently address these issues, lamented that the official sense of purpose and responsibility to address the university crisis was missing. He specifically cited the conflicting reports emanating from government officials regarding the strike, where the Minister of Education, Dr. Sam Egwu reportedly said the crisis would be resolved in "one or two weeks" while the Minister of Information and Communication, Prof. Dora Akunyili said the crisis "will soon be resolved in a matter of weeks".
In a press statement titled "Further closure of Nigerian universities worsens Nigeria's underdevelopment", Comrade Aremu said although President Umaru Yar'adua was committed to resolving the crisis, team spirit was lacking in the effort.
The NLC vice chairman said government's intervention of July 1, following the Federal Executive Council meeting came a little too late and fell short of expectations.
"It was bad enough that ASUU had two weeks warning strike during the month of March. It is now even worse enough that we allowed the warning strike to degenerate into indefinite industrial action, meaning mass closure of public universities", he noted. He wondered why government should ask for more time to consider the critical issue of ability to pay, an agreement which was entered over a year ago.
It would be recalled that government accepted three out of the four major demands of the striking lecturers, including university autonomy, increased funding for universities and approval of 70 years as the retirement age for university lecturers. Other issues that are still in contention are the demand for pay increase and funding of the university.
Aremu warned that "government officials, paid public officers from the President, Vice President to Ministers and Governors should not confirm the popular impression that their loud and intolerable indifference to ASUU strike and the casual manner in which the demands of ASUU are being treated is because their children are not in these schools".
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