Stats: 3,192,082 members, 7,946,680 topics. Date: Thursday, 12 September 2024 at 01:19 AM |
Nairaland Forum / SuperJay's Profile / SuperJay's Posts
(1) (of 1 pages)
![]() |
[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 |
(1) (of 1 pages)
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 18 |