The Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has pleaded with members of the Academic Staff of Universities (ASUU), to suspend their ongoing strike.
Fayemi urged the lecturers to consider the children of ordinary Nigerians attending the “local universities”.
A statement from the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Yinka Oyebode, quoted Fayemi as making the appeal in Ado-Ekiti when he received members of the Board of Trustees of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, led by its Chairman and former Governor of Niger State, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, in his office.
The statement was titled, ‘Insecurity: Fayemi urges FG to sharpen intelligence collection, address poverty, unemployment’.
The governor said education should be refocused at the national level due to its importance to national development.
On the lingering strike action by ASUU, Fayemi urged the federal government and relevant stakeholders in the education sector to have an urgent engagement with the leadership of ASUU in order to bring an end to the current impasse.
He also urged the lecturers to look at the hardship the students and their parents are going through in view of the strike that has kept the students at home for over seven months.
He said, “We need to get to a point of convergence with ASUU, but I also think ASUU should begin to look at this from the position of their importance. It is the students of the ordinary Nigerians who attend the local universities. So, even if it is for the sake of ordinary Nigerians who have children in these universities and cannot afford to send their children to private universities or abroad.
“Whatever the areas are, we would like to engage them, not as federal government but as concerned parties at the level of government who feel that we can still work out an arrangement in which you don’t completely dictate to your employer how he pays your salaries.
“If agreement has been entered into and if it is not going to be honoured, you owe a duty to urge other party to review it consensually and then come up with something that is mutually acceptable to both sides.”
