Ike Nnachi, Abakaliki
Ebonyi State Governor, David Umahi, on Wednesday said that the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) must be ready to make concessions to end the ongoing University lecturers strike.
He stated this when he received a delegation from the Board of Trustees of the Nigerian Police Trust Fund (NPTF) led by Dr Ben Akubueze in Abakaliki, capital of the state.
The governor lamented the suffering and dangers the students have been made to undergo as a result of the over five months strike.
Mr Umahi while noting that the union have a genuine reason for embarking on the strike, however, noted that the FG cannot meet all their demands at once.
According to him, the Union and the Federal Government should be ready to meet each other halfway so that the strike can be called off while the implementation will take a gradual process.
According to the governor, “Our basic problem in this country remains security, health and education. Let me say a little on education which is in our public domain and which is the ASUU strike and I think that our education system is not being properly articulated.”
“University education is not for everybody and that is the truth. The basic education every country strives to attain is secondary school and vocational schools.
“These are the basic schools and when you have these qualifications, you will able to use it either to start up something or to be able to use it to be employed and while you are in employment, if you don’t have the money you will not be able to aspire to university education.
“There is a need to review our educational system, it mustn’t be for everybody. I am not ashamed that I have first degree and my deputy is a PhD holder, it doesn’t matter. It is what you bring on board. So, I cannot see how we cannot sit down with our ASUU leaders and iron out this problem about the ASUU strike.
“I have read on the social media and newspapers how students got into troubles just by sitting at home or engaging in means of keeping themselves busy instead of being in schools.
“There is no way the country Nigeria will go and borrow N1.1trillion to meet ASUU demand, its quite unreasonable. Are their demands genuine? Yes, but we can start little by little.
“There must be commitment on the side of both parties that look, this ASUU are not asking this to take to their houses so to say, they are are asking 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 lot.
“But let me also say that most of the time, our people have low appetite for maintenance of public works. No matter how much you deploy to these universities, unless the users, the industry, the regulators; unless they 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 deploy 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. Lets meet ourselves halfway and there open the schools to save the fate of our children.”
