The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has disclosed that it is ending its 8 months strike soon, stating that “there is light at the end of the tunnel”.
The union, after a meeting with the house of representatives, disclosed that it is optimistic about an end to its strike soon.
ASUU’s president Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke while in a meeting with members of the house of reps, said “Please, let all of us work together to put a beautiful end to this end to this thing we have started so that every Nigerian will be proud that we have universities we can be proud of.
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“Once again, I want to thank you. I also extend our appreciation to the president for intervening, I want to appeal that in the future, we should not allow strikes to linger. The strike should not go beyond two days.
“If the way the national assembly has intervened, if we had done that long ago or those in charge of labour and education had done exactly this, we would not be where we are today.
“We would not have stayed more than two or three weeks on this strike. There is strike all over the world in the UK, US, all over, but they don’t allow it to last.
“So, once again, thank you very much and we hope that working together, in the next few days, we can put an end to this particular imbroglio in the Nigerian educational system.”
Also commenting on the issue is the Speaker of the house of representatives Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila who disclosed that most of the issues that caused the protracted crisis between ASUU and the Federal Government had been resolved, stating that the strike would end in a matter of days.
It would be recalled that ASUU had on February 14, 2022, embarked on a 4-week total and comprehensive strike to press home their unresolved demands on the federal government, over what it describes as the failure of the federal government to meet its demands of revitalization funds that date back to 2009.
The industrial action, according to ASUU, allegedly followed the failure of the federal government to fully implement the Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU) and the Memorandum of Action (MoA).
The federal government disclosed to the union that the N1.2 trillion revitalization fund being demanded should no longer be an issue as the government has successfully liquidated it by investing over N2.5 trillion in tertiary education alone in the last ten years.
This however fell on deaf ears of the union, which forced the federal government to reconstitute a 7-man team to renegotiate the 2009 agreement it had with the union.
The government and the Minister of Education in particular have been lambasted by citizens for lacking the political will, capacity, and willingness to bring the matter to an end which saw the strike extend to a period of eight months.
The strike is reportedly the second industrial action embarked on by ASUU in less than two years, and the 16th since the inception of the fourth republic democracy in 1999.
Regrettably, in spite of all these disruptive actions, the nation’s university system, the innocent tertiary education students, and their parents are in all cases made the victims.