Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi state, has stated that the federal government will not borrow over N1 trillion to please the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU. The universities teachers have been on strike since February this year in protest of unpaid allowances and emoluments by the federal government, which needs N1.1 trillion to meet the Union’s demands.
The strike has academic paralysed activities in both states and federal owned ivory towers, and the Union has vowed not to return to class until they are settled.
As a result, the federal government has also stopped the lecturers’ salaries as part of its no-work-no-pay policy, leading to stalemate between the contending parties amidst appeal from parents and other Nigerians for them to reach a compromise so that students can go back to class.
Governor Umahi’s spoke few days after the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo expressed the same view that the federal government is not prepared to borrow to pay ASUU
The Ebonyi helmsman who spoke when a delegation from the Nigeria Police Trust Fund led by Dr. Ben Akabueze, in Abakaliki, paid him a visit appealed to ASUU to come to an understanding with the government, even though their demands are legitimate.
Umahi said borrowing such a humongous amount is “quite unreasonable” describing ASUU’s “demands genuine.”
According to him, “There must be a commitment on the side of both parties that look, this ASUU is not asking for this to take to their houses’ so to say. It’s asking for it for our children, to better the infrastructure, to better the lecturers and the students.
“Yes, but we can start with a fraction of that and then have a programme that will run on the platform of sincerity to address all the lots.
“But let me also say that most of the time, our people have a low appetite for maintenance of public works.
“No matter how much you deploy to these universities unless the users and the industry regulators begin to treat public infrastructure as their own in the various universities, it will continue to go bad no matter how much the federal government deploys to it.’’
“So, it is important for ASUU to show some understanding and for those who are negotiating on the side of government to also show some understanding,” he added.
“Let’s meet ourselves halfway and then open the schools to save the fate of our children.”
Meanwhile, close watchers of the long ASUU strike insist that the labour dispute may persist for a long time if feelers coming from the government is anything to go by.
“What this means is that universities students will remain at home for long time except either ASUU and FG shifts grounds.
“The two parties must come to a compromise to resolve the issue, failure to do this, our children will continue to remain at home with attending social problems associated with youths’ redundancy. An idle mind is the Devils’ workshop,” a parents told the magazine on Thursday.
