ASUU: No Hope As Parents, Falana Appeal For End To Strike

The National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria, NAPTAN, has appealed to the Academic Staff Union of University, ASUU to suspend their industrial action.

The lecturers are currently meeting to decide on whether to suspend the over six-month-old strike. While some Nigerians are hopeful that the strike will be suspended others are not, considering that the bone of contention which is the payment of salary for the striking lecturers have not been taken care of.

The federal government has insisted that it will not pay ASUU for the period they are on strike, in line with the Buhari administration no-work-no-pay policy.

But the parents are now begging the union to come out with a decision to resume academic work at the end of the meeting.  

The parents had last week promised to pay N10,000 per student to assist the federal government in financing the nation’s universities.

The president of NAPTAN Alhaji Haruna Danjuma said the students have stayed home for too long, and there is a need for them to go back to school.

According to him, “Our children have stayed at home for too long. As parents, we are not happy with that. My expectation and the expectation of other parents is that the strike be called off and that the union and the government should meet to iron out things and for progress to be made.

“This is not a time to apportion blame, but to find the way out of this logjam. We need to get our public universities running again.

ASUU began a four-week warning strike on February 14. The union later extended the strike by eight weeks.

On May 9, the lecturers extended the strike by 12 weeks after the federal government failed to reach an agreement on ASUU’s demand for improved welfare, the revitalisation of public universities, and academic autonomy among others.

Meanwhile, a rights activist and lawyer, Femi Falana, has called on the Federal Government to sign the renegotiated agreement with ASUU.

The senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN said this is the only way to end the strike.

“Instead of engaging in the diversionary tactics of blackmailing ASUU the Federal Government should ensure that the strike is called off by signing the Renegotiated Agreement with ASUU without any further delay.

“While calling on both sides to resume the negotiations in the interest of the country the Federal Government should be prevailed upon to end the prolonged industrial action,” Falana said in a statement on Sunday.