APC chides FG over persisting ASUU strike

THE All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday lamented the inability of the Federal Government to end the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that has paralysed academic work in public universities in the country for the third month running.

   In a statement issued in Abuja by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party chided the Federal Government for what it described as insincere and amateurish handling of the strike and said “the tepid and half-hearted way the government has handled the strike has shown that it does not place much premium on education, which is the path to national development.”

   According to the party, “there is no better indication of the government’s disdain for education than the fact that the President Goodluck Jonathan administration has continued in its profligate ways even as students caught in the web of the strike remained at home when they should be engaged in serious academic work.”

   APC said since the strike started, the Jonathan administration has “thrown at least two mega, money-guzzling dinners in Abuja, perhaps the best example of the aphorism ‘Nero fiddling while Rome burns’. In one of such frivolities, the President and his party folks feasted joyously at a post-PDP convention dinner even as hapless students were bemoaning their fate over the strike.

   “Yet, some ministers had the temerity to insult the sensibilities of Nigerians by saying the government will shut down if it meets ASUU’s demand. What an affront! They did not say Nigeria will shut down when the country paid out N3 trillion in non-existent fuel subsidies; they did not say Nigeria will shut down over the N1 trillion spent in the last eight years on less than 500 people; they did not say Nigeria will shut down due to Federal Government’s monumental profligacy, which includes spending billions of naira to pamper ex-militants, some of whom are now so overfed that they are threatening the country’s very existence!”

   APC added: “It is particularly shocking that the government has carried on as if everything is normal, without bothering about the fate of the students who have been marooned at home since the strike started. Perhaps this is because the children and wards of those at the helm of affairs are luxuriating in schools abroad, or because they are too comfortable to worry about their less-fortunate compatriots.”

   APC also said, “the fact that the strike has persisted despite Jonathan’s directive, widely reported by the media, to the Federal Government’s negotiating team to do everything possible to end the strike, says a lot about the administration’s credibility.

   “In fact, the negotiations between ASUU and the Federal Government were called off two days after the President issued his directive. So much for credibility!” 

   The party reiterated its earlier call on the government to immediately implement the agreement it willingly reached with ASUU in 2009 and stop wasting its energy on why the agreement cannot be implemented, saying, “agreements are meant to be respected, not repudiated.”