The Federal Government has assured that its face-off with
the Academic Staff Union of Universities would soon end as all but one of the
issues have been resolved.
While describing the strike as unnecessary, the government
said there are other ways of getting things done.
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education,
Sonny Echono, stated these in an interview with journalists in Abuja after
monitoring the Professional Qualifying Examination organised by the Teachers
Registration Council of Nigeria.
Echono said, “The government is working very closely. We are
very concerned and the President is very concerned about this protracted (ASUU)
strike which, to so many of us, is unnecessary. We believe there are other ways
of getting things done.
“There’s a shared acceptance of so many of the issues and we
are at a point that very quickly and soon, it will be resolved. There’s only
one issue in contention, really. The other issues have either been resolved or
there have been some kind of compromise that worked out.
“We believe that reason will prevail and the overall
national interest will be the guiding principle in coming to a quick
resolution. I can assure you that work is going on assiduously in this.
“Only two days ago, the ASUU executives were at the Ministry
to meet with the Minister for certain consultations and we felt we needed to
tell them exactly what our positions are.
“We will look at the overall interest of the Nigerian
people. We know that we also operate in a context of government playing out
different segments even in the University setting.
“We have four different unions making demands and we have to
balance this. We understand the peculiarities of ASUU and we believe the
members are patriotic enough to know when to call it quits and what to call a
compromise.”
ASUU had on March 24, 2020 embarked
on an indefinite strike over the failure of the Federal Government to fulfil
the 2019 agreement; the lingering disagreement over the Integrated Personnel
and Payroll Information System and other factors.
But the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige,
had on Channels Television said that if the matter was not resolved by this
week, he would explore the provisions in the labour law and other channels.
He said the government had met six of the union’s nine
demands and that they would meet again next week with the hope of ending the
prolonged strike.
Echono stressed that the decision to put the benchmark on
teaching was aimed at having only the best brains in Nigerian classrooms as
teachers, adding that as from 2021, only qualified teachers would be allowed to
teach in the country.
He said that a national implementation committee would be
inaugurated in the coming week to ensure federal government’s agenda on
teachers registration and revitalisation was achieved, especially, the entry
qualification for teachers in schools.
He said, “With effect from next year, we will not admit or
engage people as teachers if they don’t meet a particular threshold. We are now
limiting entry to only the best.
“You must have a First Class or 2:1 as minimum and if you
have qualification in other subjects that is not in education, we will arrange
for a conversion programme to be administered by the National Teachers
Institute, TRCN and any University that has Faculties of Education or this
programme because you also have to learn ways of communicating and managing
students.
“We are migrating teachers who are not qualified or do not
have the requisite qualifications, competency, not licensed or registered to
pseamless.out of our classrooms to make way for qualified personnel because we
want to achieve learning and teaching and learning occurs in our schools.”
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If it is true that there are other ways of getting things done and seven months the government is yet to settle ASUU they should be ashamed of this failure. We should be listening to ASUU to know what the status is not the government that keeps parading falsehood, divide to conquer and intimidation tactics.
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