THE Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has insisted that the Federal Government should be held responsible for its decision to embark on an indefinite strike.Literally shooting from the hip, the union, in a terse statement last Monday, not only listed the various efforts it had made over several months to make the federal government respect the agreement both parties signed, it also exposed the 'rot' in governance and the country's slide towards the precipice, calling on all Nigerians to take the country back from looters and reject 'the robbery of our national assets.'Giving the background, the union explained that its National Executive Council (NEC) had informed the nation through the media on October 17, that it had granted the federal government's request to be given two additional months within which all the grey areas in the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement would be addressed.'NEC was disappointed,' the statement read, 'that rather than attend to the serious problems of underfunding through genuine implementation of the ASUU/FGN Agreement of 2009, government keeps on procrastinating and persisting in its deception and lies.'The union stated that in the contentious 2001 agreement, a provision was made for a review every three years to: assess the impact of the intervention on the sector; review the implementation strategy and update the document to make it more adequate towards achieving the original goal of revitalizing the University system.The statement elaborated: 'By this provision, the 2001 Agreement was due for review by 2004. However, re-negotiation did not start until 2007 and was dragged up to 2009 when an agreement was reached and signed, five years late, due to government's dilly-dallying and reticence.'It took over 50 letters, a series of warning strikes, over 200 meetings, a total and indefinite strike and five years to achieve this. This could have been accomplished within weeks. Again, over two years after signing the 2009 agreement, the government is yet to work out the modalities and commence a sincere process of its implementation.'The union stated that the objectives of the 2009 Agreement were to arrest the rot and reverse the decay in the University system; reverse the brain drain; restore the Universities through immediate, massive and sustained financial intervention, and to ensure University autonomy.After data collection and analysis, ASUU observed that it was agreed that all federal Universities would require the sum of N1.51 trillion for both recurrent and capital grants, within the next three years. Each state University would also require N3.68 million within the same period. The sources of funding were identified to include, among others: a minimum of 26 per cent of the country's annual budget for education, 50 percent of which should go the tertiary level; return of the Education Trust Fund to its original conception as Higher Education Fund; transfer of landed properties to Universities and private sector contributions.However, on September 11, the NEC resolved to embark on a warning strike due to federal government's continued indifference. After the declaration of the strike, government invited the ASUU leadership to a meeting with the Ministers of Education and Labour, at the end of which a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by both parties on September 22.But as at December 4, it asserted, 'contrary to the dictates and contents of the MoU, no document that constitutes the roadmap/timelines has been developed.' It further declared: 'that the government requested and got the two months' grace to embark on this task without producing any result, and that by this conduct, government has not fulfilled and does not intend to fulfill the resolutions it endorsed in the MoU. From the foregoing, there is a very clear indication that the government of Nigeria does not and is not ready to fulfill its own side of the agreement it freely entered into and freely signed. The government has remained defiant and closed. In the last two months, ASUU made strenuous efforts to get the expanded Implementation Committee to meet and do its work. But all ASUU's efforts were in vain. In fact, government, instead of encouraging the expanded committee, actually sabotaged it by unilaterally sacking the chairman and a couple of other members, in breach of the University Miscellaneous Amendment Act (2003). The committee could not function when the chairman and key members, who knew the history of the negotiation process and import of the agreement, were sacked by a party to the Agreement.'The union also condemned the on-going institutional accreditation exercise being carried out by the National Universities Commission (NUC), describing it as an 'absurdity.' It said: 'The exercise is an absurdity in its entirety because the health line for the various criteria being used can only be set within the ambit of the present poorly funded Nigerian educational sector. The exercise encouraged university administrators to give a feigned position that all is well when, in fact, the Universities are very sick. This is dangerous for the survival of the system.'On the state of the nation, ASUU alleged that the rulers 'are surrendering the fate of the present and future generation of Nigerians to the grips of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.' It averred that the control of the Nigerian government 'has been seized by the waning imperial powers whose economies are in serious crisis.' It posited that the World Bank was instrumental to the constitution of the Economic Team, which enabled a serving Minister to bring in 'technocrats' for the purpose of implementing the bank's economic recipe.It continued: 'with the team, the government of President Goodluck Jonathan began an aggressive pursuit of privatization, commercialization and deregulation with unparalled zeal. In recent months, the federal government has intensified its campaign for devaluation, privatization and petroleum price increase. We are now hearing that the people's opposition to these policies do not count, that the legislators' position are to be ignored, and that only the views of the executive and its agents count. Nigerians must not accept this subversion of basic democratic principles.
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