The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Christopher Piwuna has said lecturers of public universities had made sacrifices and deserved their entitlements, saying that the union had given the Federal Government enough time to meet the demands of its members.
Prof. Piwuna, speaking as a guest on Wednesday on Channels TV’s The Morning Brief, said the union had demonstrated patience, understanding, and have adopted dialogue to try to address the issues.
“We’ve been on this for such a long time, and we have, in our view, always demonstrated patience, understanding, and have adopted dialogue to try to address these issues. Since democracy started in 1999 to now, people are quick to say that ASUU has been on strike and schools have been closed, and you wonder what the government thinks about these actions”, said ASUU President.
He said the union had engaged the administration of President Bola Tinubu, but decried the response of the government, which he said was extremely slow.
“When this government came into power two and a half years or so ago, we had engaged them. This is the second Minister of Education since the advent of this administration; we engaged Prof. Tahir Mamman; we have engaged the current minister, Dr. Tunji Alausa, over these issues.
“And it appears as if the machines of the government work extremely slowly, and we have had that over and over again,” the ASUU president said.
“And we say to ourselves, ‘Why can’t you make it more efficient, why can’t you make the government more responsive to these issues?’
“But we think that we have demonstrated enough patience; we’ve kept the schools open. And let me just make this point: the government has tried to keep the schools open,” he added.
