The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) has disclosed that the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) will embark on a solidarity strike with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in order to compel the Federal Government to accede to ASUU’s demands.
National Coordinator of the ERC, Mr. Hassan Soweto, has said that the unions would soon begin “active mobilisation of their rank and file members as well as students who are frustrated at home and concerned Nigerians to come out en-masse for mass protests and demonstrations on this day.”
Soweto also said: “We commend the three unions for taking this decision which we believe is in the best interest of the education sector and the Nation at large. We agree that the ASUU strike has gone on for far too long and the plethora of strikes in the education sector are just too many. Slowly the entire public education sector is grinding to a halt. For instance, the public polytechnics are equally closed and it will not be too long before the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) follow suit. The Colleges of Education lecturers had recently held a 7-day warning strike. Indeed, the Academic Staff of Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) had to resume the strike, they had suspended in July after three months, due to the insensitivity and insincerity of government to their demands and terms of the suspension of the last strike.”
He said: “The three unions come from key sectors of the Nation’s economy. As such their decision to embark on solidarity strike if given full and practical effect could help pile pressure on the recalcitrant anti-poor Federal Government to meet demands of striking education unions so that public Universities and Polytechnics can be reopened for academic activities to resume. This would also serve as an example for other unions and the entire labour movement to follow. We want to stress that the solidarity actions which the NUT, NUPENG and NUEE have envisioned should also cover and back the strikes of ASUP, COEASU and all other unions in the education sector that have any on-going dispute with the government over pay, conditions and education funding. This is the best way to ensure that all the outstanding disputes in the education sector are resolved and all public Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Educations are opened for full and undisrupted academic activities.” Soweto added that the ERC understands the position of Nigerians who believe that the entire sector will crumble if such a union as the NUT goes on strike. In response to this, he said: The point that must be made is that with or without strikes, the entire education sector including secondary and primary education has already been destroyed and shutdown in terms of standard and quality that it is simply a pipe dream to imagine any serious learning is going on at any point in time in any of our public schools.”