- ‘Strike a national embarrassment’
President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to end the lingering Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, strike, by emulating the strategy adopted by former Predident Goodluck Jonathan in November 2013, during which he personally presided over a meeting with the aggrieved lecturers and had the knotty issues resolved.
Convener of the Middle Belt Movement for Justice and Peace, MBMJP, Joe Bukka, who gave the advise, yesterday, in Makurdi, said it had become imperative for the President to personally step into the matter to have it resolved, in the interest of all parties, without further delay, according to The Guardian.
He said: “The former President Jonathan’s strategy paid off in November 2013, when the strike, at the time, lasted for four months and it became obvious that Nigerians resented the government for allowing the strike to linger for that long when the negotiators, on the part of the government, failed to make any headway.
“The then President Jonathan rose to the occasion, he summoned all the relevant government functionaries and the leadership of ASUU to a meeting which he personally presided over.
“He took charge of the negotiations in a sitting that lasted about 12 hours and at the end of that meeting agreements were reached, immediate actions taken and the strike was called off to the relief of all Nigerians.
“We urge President Buhari to adopt the same strategy at this time to have the strike called off because it is a national embarrassment that our public universities have remained shut for this long and our leaders are busy talking politics without taking cognisance of the fact that a country is in trouble when its human capital development is stagnated.
“That is the implication of having this strike linger for this long after the close to one year that was lost in 2021 due to COVID-19 and the same ASUU dispute.”
Jonathan had on Wednesday last week at the 70th birthday celebration of Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, organised by The Kukah Centre, in Abuja, disclosed how he had ended a four-month strike by ASUU in one night
The former president had said: “The society we are managing is complex, now we are talking about ASUU strike, during my time too, ASUU had four months of strike, different committees were meeting and meeting and nothing was working.
“I said how can our children stay out of school for four months. So I had to call a meeting of all the leadership of ASUU.
“I presided over the meeting with my vice president, the Attorney General was there, I said that that night we must solve the problem.
“The Attorney General was there, Secretary to the Government of the Federation was there, the ministers of education were there, the labor ministers were there, the finance ministers, everybody that has to do with it.
“And I thought that my being there would help us to do things quickly. But we spent the whole night, before we finished like 5:30am before we concluded and the strike was called off, so there were issues.”
