…From Dele Ogunyemi, Ibadan…
Worried by the lingering crisis in the nation’s education sector, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) will on Wednesday make their positions known on the on-going strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which has already entered its fourth month.
Oyo State Chairman of the NLC, Comrade Bashiru Olanrewaju dropped this hint on Monday while speaking at a town hall meeting also tagged the “Save Public Education Campaign” – SPEC – organized inside the Trenchard Hall of the University of Ibadan by the U.I. Branch of ASUU.
While declaring pointedly that “Nigeria is currently on the precipice”, Comrade Olanrewaju told the gathering that the duo of NLC and the TUC are solidly behind ASUU in its just cause aimed at emancipating the nation’s education sector from total collapse.
The NLC chairman also revealed that the two unions had been engaging the Federal Government on the need to fulfill its 2009 agreement with ASUU.
Also speaking at the occasion, the Chairman, ASUU, U.I. Branch, Dr. Segun Ajiboye faulted the latest appeal by President Goodluck Jonathan to the striking university teachers to go back to work saying “the President should rather declare an emergency on the education sector which is already in a total rot.”
“It is all about the future of Nigerian students,” Dr. Ajiboye added.
A cross section of members of the public who spoke at the forum also identified themselves with the ASUU struggle while some of them actually called for what they tagged a revolution in the nation’s education sector.
The Dean, Faculty of Education of the University of Ibadan, Professor Remi Raji had earlier made an audio-visual presentation of the NEEDS Assessment of the various public universities across the country which, according to him, had earlier been presented to the President.
The NEEDS Assessment showed the perilous state of affairs in the various universities as manifested in decayed infrastructure including outdated laboratory and library facilities, dilapidated hostel accommodation as well as irregular power supply and bad intra-campus roads, among others.
The town hall meeting which had in attendance members of the public including students, artisans, marketmen and women and several others, had as its theme “Education is a Right: Public Universities Must Not Die.”