“Don’t hurt the future generation for goodness sake”

the president of the federal republic of Nigerian, Muhammed Buhari, had earlier beckoned on the academic staff union of university to reconsider their industrial action and its impact on the pending future of the country,

While seething in the presence of dignitaries; APC governors, legislators and political leaders, he called out the striking lecturers demanding that they resume dispensing lectures.

He appealed to both agitating bodies while recognizing their stances in the matter saying that they should push forth their demands and draw a conclusion to it while students remain in lecture halls.

To this, the Academic Staff Union of the university replied by saying “enough can’t be enough” 

the union moved that the educational system of varsities in the country must hover over its decaying reality and the president must ensure it.

Part of their statement read;

“Enough can’t be enough until the president moves to reposition the decaying public university education in the country “

The union pointed fingers at the president announcing his lack of authority in presiding the subjects that spiralled into the present strike, they also accused the government for being a pedestal for the lasting strike that have been running for five months now.

The statement read

“For the records Mr President, enough will not be enough in the struggle to reposition the public university education in Nigeria under this present administration and beyond as long as the Nigerian public universities are reduced to glorified secondary schools for the production of poor quality and globally uncompetitive,

rejected and unemployable graduates; Nigerian academics remain one of the poorest paid scholars not only in Africa but the world;

our universities are unattractive to students and scholars from across the globe; universities in the countries are made constituency projects and mushroomed for political exigencies; Nigerian universities, no thanks to IPPIS are run as government parastatals; Nigerian universities are seen as profit- centres where government and its functionaries can obtain money to fund its excessive gastronomical greed.”

“For ASUU, this strike action should not have lasted beyond the first week after it was declared because the issues at stake were neither new nor do they require rocket science to resolve given that there had been MOUs and MOAs as well as a duly renegotiated ASUU-FGN Agreement completed way back 13th May 2020 before your (President Buhari’s) government which you and your administration neglected and refused to implement and sign,”

They further said that the president’s statement was engineered to hoodwink the masses into picturing the union as defaulters—a mere propaganda, and that the fact that other institutions are observing similar industrial actions proves the maximum level of neglect and complacency of the government.