FG nonchalant over ASUU strike, education, Edo State PDP alleges

Orbih, who expressed dissatisfaction with the nonchalant attitude of the federal government to education matters, said that government has made life unbearable for majority of Nigerians.He spoke yesterday during the flag-off of the party’s campaign for the 2019 election in Edo North, where he called on the people to join what he described as “Nigerians’ moving train of change.”

Leading members of his executive committee to flag off the campaign, Orbih told PDP loyalists that “Nigerians are now very eager to use their voter’s card to change the ruling government following its failure at the federal and the state levels in the country.”

According to him, in 2015, the APC promised to give Nigerians security and good standard of living; “but today, it takes over 16 hours to travel from Benin to Abuja because of bad roads. Even to travel from Benin to our neigbouring Asaba in Delta State now takes several hours.”

In the same vein, co-convener of the BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) advocacy group, Aisha Yesufu, has called on Nigerian students to organise themselves and march to the presidential villa in Abuja to demand an end to the lingering ASUU strike.

University lecturers had on November 5 embarked on strike, demanding the implementation of the 2009 agreement it entered into with the federal government. The lecturers are also calling for full implementation of the Memorandum of Action (MoA) agreement with the government in 2017; improved working condition and welfare package; and upgrade of facilities in universities across the country.

In a series of tweets yesterday, she urged the students to stop waiting for someone or people to determine their fate, charging them to speak for themselves.

“Today, ASUU, just like the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), is seen as a nuisance that can be ignored when on strike. After all, private universities are churning out students; so Nigeria has got nothing to lose; rather the strike saves government the stress of looking for where to fix them,” she said.