ASUU has accused the Federal Government, FG of deceiving Nigerians, and
further threatened to boycott meetings to end the strike which has
lingered.
ASUU’s National President, Biodun Ogunyemi, the union held a
series of consultative meetings with the government and written series
of letters with little or nothing to the effect. According to him, the
meetings were to ensure that the agreements with FG were implemented. He
added that this led to the strike on November 4.
“Since the
commencement of this strike, we have had six meetings with agents of the
federal government, with no clear commitment from government to
resolving the issues we presented.
Government appears to have
adopted ‘keep them talking’ strategy while deceiving the public that
progress was being made and that partial agreements had been reached
between union and government.
We want to say that government has
continually and falsely raised the hopes of the Nigerian public on the
state of duscussion with our union and we may not be interested in
holding further dialogue with them until we see signs of commitment and
sincerity in addressing the issues before them.
Our expectation
from a very responsive and sincere position is that by now, all
outstanding issues would have been resolved to the satisfaction of both
parties. Unfortunately, government is yet to show commitment and
sincerity in addressing these problems,” he said.
ASUU who
accused the FG of deceiving Nigerians, stated that they have taken up
its current project as a lifetime, which was why dating back to the
1980s, the union had remained consistent on what was of concern to it.
“We have strong reasons to believe that the continuation of Dr Wale
Babalakin as the head of the renegotiation with ASUU will not yield good
fruit,” Ogunyemi said.
“If we miss education, we miss
development as we will end up being enslaved the second time. What is
happening in this country now is that people are privatising everything,
including education and before we know it, what happened to our primary
and secondary education will happen.
And these are some of the
things we are supposed to be tracking and engage in this society if we
want to make the change that we need. Our conviction is the reason
behind the prolonged strike and our members have the conviction that
until we get education right, Nigeria will never get it right.
Insurgency will increase, banditry, poverty, kidnapping, misery and
other societal ills will continue.
Let me also state clearly too
that our strike has nothing to do with politics or election, as is being
speculated in some sectors of the society. We have never thought of
aborting any election. We do not want to create problem for this country
but let the government do the right thing,” he added.
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