Maku: Govt Risks Shutdown if It Bows to All ASUU Demands

Government activities in the country risk being shutdown if the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and other sectors in the country insist on the total resolution of their problems, the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, said yesterday.

Maku, who was responding to questions from State House correspondents at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting yesterday, noted that the federal government had spent a lot on the development of tertiary education across the country.

Acknowledging that the federal government was desirous of forging a good working relationship with ASUU, Maku appealed to the union to have a rethink on its demands by taking into consideration the fact that there are many competing demands on the federal government from other sectors.

Regretting that were it not for the proliferation of violence in the northern part of the country, occasioned by the activities of Islamist insurgents on which the federal government is sinking a huge amount of money to restore normalcy, Maku said much would have been done to upgrade the education sector.

“If we say every particular problem we face in this country, we will not work until it is resolved, then I'm sure there is no sector that will work,” Maku stressed, pointing out that if all unions insisted on solving all their problems, the country would stop working.

“We are partners with ASUU. We are friends. They are our patriots and we understand the critical role that the university teachers are playing to create a new society that we are hoping to have.

“But at the same time, this is the reality that we need to look at and we have to put the nation first,” the minister said.

He acknowledged that every sector required more from the system “but the truth is that there are limitations and from the limitations we have, we believe that ASUU really needs to have a rethink and ensure that we reopen our universities because we are feeling the pain of our children being at home and this indeed is completely avoidable.”

Noting that government’s attempt in 2010 to increase public salaries by 53.4 per cent left a huge deficit in the annual budget, Maku, however, maintained that it had made giant strides in improving tertiary education.

“I just want to say that it is unfortunate that our students are still at home. It is very sad because the federal government has done so much in the last three years for education," he said, listing the completion of 37 projects in the University of Benin, multiple ongoing projects in the University of Port Harcourt, University of Jos, as wellas many polytechnics and colleges of education that have been funded.

“Government has priorities. Education remains the number one priority and will continuously remain the number one priority of a developing country like Nigeria.

“There is no way we can avoid it, the quality of human capital is going to determine the future of our country. But at the same time, when you look at the environment today, we are dealing with the question of power, railway that had broken down years ago.

“We are dealing with the issue of roads, of creating the enabling environment for industries to prosper. There is no area today that you touch that you do not have some urgency for government to deal with,” he said.

On her part, the Minister of Education, Prof Ruqayyatu Rufa’i, said the position of the federal government on the ASUU impasse was transparent, but expressed regret that the union was bent on portraying the government in a bad light, after signing the agreement in 2009.

Expressing surprise that up till now, ASUU was yet to call off its strike, Rufa’i said it was regrettable that the union was waiting for the government to thrash out the fine points of 26 per cent of the budget, earned academic allowances, landed property and the pension scheme for it, instead of it taking the initiative to tackle some of these issues.