By Don Silas Veteran trade unionist, Peter Esele has warned the Federal Government that the pervading insecurity in the country will...
By Don Silas
Veteran trade unionist, Peter Esele has warned the Federal
Government that the pervading insecurity in the country will never end unless
public universities are re-opened.
Mr Esele, a former President of the Trade Union Congress
(TUC) of Nigeria, gave the warning while commenting on the solidarity protest
embarked upon by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
He was speaking in an interview with the News Agency of
Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Benin.
The NLC called up the protest on July 26 to show solidarity
with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which has been on strike
for over five months.
The academic body has been at loggerheads with the Federal
Government over the years for the apparent inability of the government to meet
the terms of its agreements with the union.
According to Esele, the NLC ought to have staged the protest
a long time ago to show its displeasure but “better late than never.’’
He pointed out that the current strike could hurt the
upcoming general elections, advising the government to take steps to resolve
the issues with ASUU, to save the future of democracy in the country.
The former TUC chief noted that the latest ASUU strike could
have been avoided if the Federal Government had kept faith and respected the
terms of agreements reached with ASUU.
“If you ask why ASUU is on strike right now, it is because
they had negotiations with the Federal Government in 2009 and there was an
agreement.
“That agreement was supposed to have been implemented by the
government but they didn’t implement it.
“In 2014, the government paid N200 billion out of the N1.2
trillion ASUU demanded and in 2019, the government paid only N20 billion.
“So when the government has gone ahead not to fulfil the
terms of agreements reached, what you have naturally is for ASUU to go on
strike to press its demands,” he said.
Esele said that the solidarity protest by the NLC nationwide
was to make everybody know that the continuous closure of public universities
in the country was dangerous for the nation and the education sector in particular.
He pointed out that from 1999 till date, the nation’s
universities had been shut cumulatively for about six years.
“Yet, we express surprise over the current insecurity. You
have millions of Nigerian youths sitting at home and doing nothing.
“More so, infrastructure in the universities are decaying
because nobody is there to manage them. You have an economy around
universities, right now that economy is nil.
“Workers in that environment, real estate and even parents
in the universities’ environment are all at home, so why are you surprised
about insecurity.
“An idle mind, they say, is the devil’s workshop,” he
warned.
Esele stressed that if the government had been committed to
honouring agreements reached with ASUU and paid N200 billion yearly since the
agreement was reached, it would have long completed the payment and forestalled
the strike by ASUU.
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