PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has asked the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to end its industrial action, which has lasted about five months.
Buhari said the industrial action posed a danger to the socio-economic well-being of Nigeria now and in the future.
He also said the strike would hurt the capacity of affected students to compete with their peers globally.
The President stated these on Monday in Daura when he received Northern governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as well as lawmakers and political leaders who paid him Sallah homage.
A statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said the President received his guests at his private residence in his home town, Daura, where he is observing the Eid-El Kabir (Sallah) holiday.
Buhari said, “The strike had already taken a toll on the psychology of parents, students and other stakeholders, throwing up many moral issues that already beg for attention.
“President Buhari noted that the country’s future rests on the quality of educational institutions and education while assuring that the government understands their position, and negotiations should continue with students in lecture halls.
“We hope that ASUU will sympathise with the people on the prolonged strike. Truly, enough is enough for keeping students at home. Don’t hurt the next generation, for goodness sake,” he said.
The President called on well-meaning Nigerians to intervene in persuading the striking lecturers to reconsider their position and the ripple effect on an entire generation and the nation.
ASUU embarked on strike on February 14 after the government failed to meet its demands.
The action follows a similar nine month old strike the union embarked upon between March and December 2020 and many others since the nation returned to democracy in 1999.
Efforts to resolve the current impasse have yielded no fruit.
While emphasizing how the strike would affect the student’s ability to compete favourably with their contemporaries globally, Buhari said, “Colonial type education was geared towards producing workers in government. Those jobs are no longer there. Our young people should get an education to prepare them for self-employment. Now education is for the sake of education.
“Through technology, we are much more efficient. He added that we should encourage our children to get an education, not only to look for government jobs.
President Buhari said the nation’s resources should be channelled into building more infrastructure and operations in the health and educational sector, not to expand the bureaucracy to create job opportunities.