Trade Union Congress urges FG to dialogue with ASUU

The Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has charged the Federal Government to urgently engage in dialogue with university teachers to avoid doing more damage to the stressed economy and the insecurity challenge in the country.

The union is worried that an agreement entered into in 2009 has still not been honoured eight years on, adding that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was magnanimous enough to sign another Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2013 but the issues remained unresolved.

Secretary General of the TUC, Musa Lawal, said the union had examined the issues raised by the lecturers and did not find them wanting in any of them.He noted that ASUU had asked for revitalisation of public universities and register the Nigerian Universities Pension Management Company (NUPMC) to resolve pending pension matters, among others.

“The reason we are where we are today is because successive governments have not met the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO’s) budget benchmark of 26 per cent for education even by half.

“Countries that are doing well today do not pay lip service to the education sector. We feel pained by this development because virtually all the people in power today attended public schools.

“They were fed from public treasury. Some schooled abroad on scholarship. They have made nonsense of our education system because their children attend schools abroad,” he said.

Lawal added that the implication of the strike embarked upon by ASUU is that more youth may go into crime because an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. He lamented that as at today no part of the country was crime free, adding that only a week ago, worshippers were killed in a Church in Anambra State, while insecurity in the north has not abated and that there has been a harvest of kidnappings and ritual killings in the West.

“The news is all over on the social media about Nigerian migrants dying on the high seas almost on a daily basis. And now ASUU strike again?“We call on well meaning Nigerians to prevail on the Federal Government to listen to the voice of reason by honouring the agreements, while we call on the striking lecturers not to be tired of making sacrifices due the state of the nation’s economy,” Lawal stated.