Our demands from politicians in 2023, by NLC

PCC wades in as ERC condemns minister’s walkout on students

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has developed a charter of demands it will present to political office-seekers for the 2023 general elections.

At the Workers’ Political Conference organised by NLC in Abuja, yesterday, the President of NLC, Ayuba Wabba, listed the charter to include equity, fairness and social justice.

“Our charter of demands asks for free and quality education to tertiary level for every Nigerian child. It insists that every Nigerian should access free and quality healthcare from cradle to grave. It posits that politicians should no longer be allowed to send their kids to schools abroad or treat their sicknesses in foreign hospitals, while the children of the poor are trapped in endless strikes and poor medical facilities which their failed leadership has imposed on all of us.”

According to former Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, Nigeria is at a point in its history when credible national development should be on the front burner of national discourse.

THE Public Complaints Commission (PCC) has held a peace meeting with the leaderships of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and ASUU, for a timely resolution of the crisis.

ASUU Chairman in the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FOUYE), Dr. Gabriel Omonijo, and his counterpart in the Ekiti State University (EKSU), Dr. Kayode Arogundade, represented the union at the parley, while the students were led by the Chairman, NANS/JCC, Ekiti axis, Felix Olanrewaju.

At the meeting held in Ado Ekiti, yesterday, the PCC Commissioner, Ekiti office, Mr. Kayode Bamisile, said every right-thinking Nigerian must be disturbed by the lingering strike in the universities and the attendant crises.

Bamisile said PCC waded into the matter as a government agency seeking to end the feud, for students to return to their campuses.

BUT the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) has berated the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, for walking out on students during a parley with the leadership of NANS over the strike.

The minister had reportedly become incensed and walked out when the students challenged him for sending his own children overseas to study, while they spend average of six years for a four-year academic programme.

In a statement, yesterday, the Deputy National Coordinator of ERC, Isaac Ogunjimi, and National Mobilisation Officer, Michael Lenin, described the minister’s behaviour as provocative, arrogant and insensitive to the feelings of Nigerian students, who were angry over the incessant disruption of the academic calendar due to Federal Government’s refusal to honour agreements with staff unions.