Opinion by ehibraimah: Conversations on ASUU strike at Harvard seminar via thecableng
Two years ago, ASUU also embarked on a strike action to press home their demands – the strike lasted from March to December 2020 and cost students one full academic session. I sympathise with university lecturers because it is not easy to survive without regular income – except for those who are engaged in other endeavours.
Kazeem Akintunde, a journalist, in a recent opinion piece, complained that the “strike action that was meant to save the sector from total collapse has now left university education in complete ruins”. But this was not, in my view, the intention of ASUU because some of the children of ASUU members are also affected by the strike action. ASUU is actually fighting to defend public education in the country. With each strike action, students become frustrated and restless.
Other demands include addressing the proliferation and governance issues in state universities; releasing withheld salaries of academics; settlement of promotion areas and payment of outstanding third-party deductions. I still do not understand why the federal government allowed the strike to drag on interminably. Negotiations between Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and productivity, and ASUU officials, always ended in deadlocks.
However, Mallam Adamu announced at the September 6 meeting that the sum of N150 billion was provided in the 2023 budget as funds for the revitalisation of universities to be disbursed to the institutions in the first quarter, while another N50 billion was also provided in the 2023 budget for the payment of outstanding arrears of earned academic allowances, also to be disbursed in the first quarter. Adamu appealed to ASUU to accept these gestures with the chance of doing more in the future.
Funding public education is the responsibility of the federal and state governments because education is on the concurrent list of the 1999 Constitution as amended. But the governments are saying they cannot fund education alone. ASUU does not believe the government is sincere about funding education.
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