The factional President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Haruna Kadiri, has said that the student body will engage the federal government over the demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in order to avert the planned strike by the lecturers.
Kadiri said the move was necessitated by the need for relevant stakeholders to sit down collectively and find a way out of the nagging disagreements between the federal government and the ASUU since 2009.
While noting that strikes called in the past by lecturers had never really brought desired results, the student body pleaded with ASUU to jettison its planned strike action.
Kadiri told Tribune newspaper: “We are trying to meet with stakeholders to meet with ASUU to put the issues on the table, to see which ones we can plead with ASUU and the ones we can engage the federal government on.
“As much as we are not in support of strike, we are not telling ASUU outright that it is wrong (you don’t flog a man and tell him not to cry), we are also pleading with the federal government to be responsible enough to meet the demands that they have reached over time (since 2009).
“Agreed, it is not this present government that reached that agreement, but government is a continuum; so it is expected that government should have sat down with ASUU to review the agreement and agree on certain things…not for us to start hearing that ASUU wants to go on strike again. It’s unfortunate.
“We’re planning to engage them on Monday. Let us sit down collectively and find a way out.
“Honestly, I am not blaming ASUU; neither am I saying ‘kudos, go on strike’, but I think we should meet, review the issues and further talk about the issues. That is the only solution to it.
“I once engaged ASUU and I said before I was born, ASUU had been going on strike, and if you ask me: has strike ever brought about the desired result?
“Our institutions are research centres. Why is it that ASUU hasn’t gone on research to find a permanent solution to all of these their agitations? Because it looks like strike has never brought the desired results.
“If ASUU cannot go on research to get a desired result on how to curb all of these issues, then we are in trouble in this country.”
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