Nigerian student leaders have again issued a seven-day ultimatum for the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to resolve the ongoing Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike
The students under the aegies of Council of Student’s Union Presidents (CSUP), on Thursday, August 4, 2022, also demanded that the President should sack the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, and his counterpart in the Ministry Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, for their failure to resolve the strike in two weeks as directed.
The CSUPs, which comprised all Presidents of Students Union Governments in over 100 Universities in Nigeria, also lamented the continuous loss of students to incessant killing from bandits attack as a result of their prolonged stay at home caused by the strike
The Convener of CSUPs and SUG President of the Federal University of Technology in Minna, Ishaka Yahaya, told journalists that failure by the government to end the strike would lead to mass protest across the country.
Some of the demands date back to the unimplemented 2009 agreement the Federal Government had with the union.
The union on August 1, 2022, rolled over the strike with additional four weeks, following alleged failure by the government to address the issue.
This was even after the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), backed by some civil society organisations and students, organised a nationwide solidarity protest supporting ASUU on July 26 and 27, 2022.
President Muhammadu Buhari had ordered the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu to work with other officials in his government to resolve the stalemate during a meeting with the relevant Federal Government officials in his office on July 19, 2022.
But Yahaya said that many students who were to be in school but resulted to do other jobs get kidnapped and killed in the process.
He told the government to look into the demands of ASUU and attend to them so that they could return to school.
“It is true when they say when two elephants meet; only the grass suffers. It is quite obvious here that both the Federal Government and ASUU have nothing to lose in this fight.