[quote author=kingobasi]ASUU Strike: CSOs And
The Burden To Save
Education
With university students across the country
counting their loses as the protracted
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)
strike enters its 10th week, the Coalition of
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) has called
on the Federal Government to save the
country’s educational system.
ASUU, it would be recalled, went on strike on
July 2, 2013 over the refusal of the federal
government to honour the 2009 agreement
on the funding of universities as well as a
January 2012 memorandum of understanding
(MOU).
The CSOs are lamenting that the grounding
of the universities and paralysis of all
academic and social activities is inimical to
the long term development aspiration of the
country.
The group is expressing worry that in today’s
world which is knowledge-driven,
government is still fiddling while the Ivory
towers are ‘burning’ two months into the
ASUU strike.
It should be noted that the 2009 FGN/ASUU
agreement was the culmination of three
years of negotiation following a similar
strike by university lecturers in 2006.
“Since 1991, the struggle by Nigerian
lecturers to ensure adequate funding in order
to arrest the rot in the Nigerian tertiary
education has been on with hardly any year
going by without the lecturers going on strike
to either demand that government
implements the agreement reached, or
calling for a review of the agreements.
“Much more disturbing is the predilection of
the government for reneging on agreements
freely entered into with university teachers
as was the case when the university sector
was rocked by protracted industrial unrest
between 1994 and 1996 as a result of the
government’s refusal to honour the terms of
the FGN/ASUU agreement of September
1992”, it noted.
The current strike, the coalition noted, is
also a product of the federal government’s
refusal to honour the terms of the 2009
agreement entered into with ASUU.
According to the group, these acts of bad
faith by successive governments in refusing
to honour the terms of agreements freely
entered into more than anything else, has
accounted for the intractable crisis in the
nation’s university system.
“Beyond the immediate implications of
government’s unilateral repudiation of the
terms of agreements freely entered into, is
the larger implication for the economy and
society at large in terms of the sanctity of
agreements, contracts and treatises signed
by the Nigerian government.
“A government that habitually reneges on
agreements freely entered into with its
citizens cannot be counted upon to uphold
the sanctity of contracts, treatises or
agreements. Little wonder then that all the
jamborees of the government in the name of
attracting foreign investors end up yielding
little or no result since no serious investor
will invest in a country where the sanctity of
agreements or contract means nothing,” the
further pointed out.
Fundamentally, ASUU’s demand has been on
the need to arrest the falling standard and
ensure the quality of tertiary education
which has been generally acknowledged as
having fallen beyond imagination.
The report of the Committee on Needs
Assessment of Nigerian Universities
(CNANU) set up by the federal government
vividly captures this rot.
“The struggles of ASUU to attract adequate
funding as well as qualitative tertiary
education has been on despite the existence
of a statutory body created specifically for
the purpose of ensuring the quality of
tertiary education in Nigeria and advising
government on issues of remuneration in the
university system.
“The National Universities Commission
(NUC) has a duty as part of its functions as
stated in its enabling act to ‘… prepare
periodic master plans for the balanced and
coordinated development of all universities
in Nigeria’, ‘lay down minimum academic
standards in the federal republic of Nigeria
and accredit degrees and other academic
awards’, ‘to ensure that quality is maintained
within the academic programmes of the
Nigerian university system’, ‘to advise the
federal government on the financial needs,
both recurrent and capital of university
education in Nigeria…’, ‘to undertake
periodic review of the terms and conditions
of service of personnel engaged in the
universities and to make recommendations
thereon to the Federal Government as
appropriate”.
The group reiterated that “it is quite clear
from the foregoing therefore, that the
incessant agitations of ASUU are direct
fallouts of the embarrassing abdication of
responsibility by the NUC”.
The CSOs are alleging. Action! Action!! Action!!! CSOs act now, action speaks louder than voice instead of ds long epistle

APC should not behave like saint here they should also explain why state unis ar vry expensive in their APC south-western state