The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo (SAN) has called on Nigerian parents and guardians to beg the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to call- off the 7 months strike embarked on by the state -owned University lecturers.
While featuring on a programme on Channels Television, Keyamo opined that the government had done its best and appealed to parents to beg ASUU.
Kayemo, while explaining government’s efforts to resolve the lingering ASUU strike said,
“The moment they went on strike, we intervened, what is the manner again beyond that ? Even before the strike began, we called them to a meeting, what manner is more than that? It’s not like we left them to go on strike first and we were sleeping, as the talk started, they still went on strike.
“You can not allow one sector of the economy to hold you down and then blackmail you to go and borrow N1.2 trillion and our total income is around N6.1 trillion and we have roads to build, health centres and other sectors to take care of.
I will tell the parents, everybody to go and beg ASUU like the President said the other time, those who know them should appeal to their sense of patriotism. The nation can not ground to a halt because we want to take care of the demands of ASUU”.
ASUU had declared a nationwide strike on February 14, 2022 due to failure of government to accede to the demands of the Academic Union which includes:The release of the revitalisation funds for universities, release of earned allowances for university lecturers, deployment of the University Transparency Accountability System for the payment of salaries and allowances of university lecturers, renegotiation of the ASUU-Federal Government 2009 agreement among others.
Recall, the President had during Eid- El -Mubarak celebration directed the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, Chris Ngige and others to resolve the lingering crises .
Following Keyamo’s advice on ASUU strike, Nigerians have started lambasting him on social media.
Some of the messages read:
“But you borrowed N1.14 billion to procure Prado jeep for Niger Republic..”“, Nigeria is a wonderful country, it borrows from China, spends it in the Niger Republic and leaves debts for future generation”
” We can’t borrow to invest in education but we can borrow to purchase 1.4 billion worth of 10 Toyota Land Cruiser V8 for the Niger Republic’… There was a country!”
