President Muhammadu Buhari has appealed to the ASUU to shelve their seven months old strike. The University lecturers began the strike in February over unpaid entitlements and have since stayed out of lecture rooms, despite appeal by the federal government and other well-meaning Nigerians.
Buhari spoke five days after Vice chancellors of Nigerian universities under the aegis of Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, CVCNU, urged the president to directly wade into the matter.
“We plead that drastic action is taken to stem the hemorrhage that the system is currently witnessing. For the sake of our children and society, we need the decision,” Prof. Samuel Edoumiekumo, chairman of CVCNU said last week in Abuja at the presentation of the Model Intellectual Property for Nigerian Universities.
In a statement released on Monday, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu said Buhari made the appeal at his Daura, Katsina home where he’s currently spending the Salah break.
Buhari said the strike has dragged on for too long, bringing academic activities to a halt across all the nation’s ivory towers, adding that the situation will have generational consequences on families, the educational system and future development of the country.
The President, who received some governors of the All Progressives Congress, APC, legislators and political leaders at his residence, also appealed to other well meaning Nigerians to wade in on the ASUU’s strike, saying ‘enough is enough’.
said the strike had already taken a toll on the psychology of parents, students and other stakeholders, throwing up many moral issues that already beg for attention.
President Buhari noted that the future of the country rests on the quality of educational institutions and education, while assuring that the government understands their position, and negotiations should continue, with students in lecture halls.
According to the president, “We hope that ASUU will sympathise with the people on the prolonged strike. Truly, enough is enough for keeping students at home. Don’t hurt the next generation for goodness sake.
“Colonial type education was geared towards producing workers in government. Those jobs are no longer there. Our young people should get education to prepare them for self-employment. Now education is for the sake of education. Through technology we are much more efficient. We should encourage our children to get education, not only to look for government jobs.”
