Former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has urged the Federal Government to parley with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to resolve the lingering strike embarked upon by the union.
Sanusi spoke on the sidelines of a three-day Transforming Education Summit held in New York.
He said that only dialogue and compromise would resolve the crisis in the education sector.
According to him, government must see reason with lecturers that have been complaining about meagre pay.
Sanusi also urged ASUU not to forget that the longer the strike dragged on, the worse the effect on their students.
“Government needs to recognise that teachers are human beings; we are in a country with high level of inflation and salary don’t take teachers anywhere and teaching is a profession that needs to be valued from lowest to highest.
“Our education employees are staff of health establishment too, what we don’t know is that we have lost so many academics, many people who go abroad to do PhD don’t come back.
“Many medical doctors working in Nigeria have gone abroad,’’ Sanusi told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)0 lamented that brain drain had impacted negatively on the economy.
“It is a crisis because we need the doctors in Nigeria, we need the teachers in Nigeria because we have invested so much in training them.
“Both sides (ASUU and Federal Government) have a stake in sitting down and have a dialogue, making compromises, I believe it can be resolved in good faith,’’ Sanusi said.