ASUU strike - A salvage mission

The ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is a salvation mission to rescue our tertiary education, President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria Shehu Sani has said.

Sani told our source yesterday that the ongoing strike is a patriotic act of resistance against bad and visionless leadership in the country, adding that it is a genuine struggle to save the education sector from total collapse.

University teachers, he said, have a right to embark on strike and as such cannot be stopped by, "hired agents of the state or people ignorant of the imperative of sacrifice".

"When ASUU was in the trenches fighting military dictatorship and fighting to restore democracy to our country, most of those opposed to the strike today had no courage to speak out. Those opposed to the strike are reactionaries and running dogs of the political establishment," he said. He added that leaders' indifference to the state of education stems from the fact that most of their children study in expensive schools abroad.

He lamented that successive governments in Nigeria destroyed tertiary education by chronic underfunding, systematic neglect and deliberate lack of emphasis.

"Most of our leaders attended public schools but public schools today have become public nuisance and public shame. Nigerian public universities are now dysfunctional bakeries for churning out half baked graduates while private universities have become outpost mills for massive production of fraudulent first class graduates," he said.

Sani said there is no other way for university teachers to press home their demands and pressurise the Federal Government to keep to its promises than through strikes.

He therefore urged the Federal Government to meet the demands of the teachers and not resort to blackmail.

"It is ironic that some Nigerians have the guts to protest against ASUU strike but fail to protest against the Federal Government when it reneged on all agreements it entered with ASUU," he said.
Source: Daily Trust

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