by ‘Jola Sotubo

The senate president in pleading for the striking lecturers to go back to work had agreed with the Federal Government’s stance that the agreement in question could not be implemented and he further said that the ASUU officials who negotiated had exploited the ignorance of  the FG’s team.

The Nation reports:

Aremu said ASUU had rejected the pleas from senators to call off their strike. He advised the lawmakers to beg President Jonathan to implement the agreement.

Aremu recalled that it took ASUU and the Federal Government team, led by Mr Gamaliel Onosode, three years to arrive at the agreement, pointing out that it is pretentious for any top government functionary to claim that the government negotiating team did not understand fully what they signed with the teachers.

According to him, ASUU went to the negotiation with a 300-page charter, which was reduced to a 60-page agreement after the union shifted so much ground on many of its demands.

He said Dr. Jonathan, who was then the Vice President, asked the government to sign the agreement after thoroughly going through it for six months.

“He perused the draft agreement and asked the government team to sign every page of the document. Our President also signed it. The content of the agreement we have today is not what we took to the negotiation table. That shows Nigerians how greatly we’ve shifted ground. So, the team knew what they went into.”

Aremu explained that the Federal Government also came up with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the implementation of the agreement in January last year. He asked: “So, if anyone assumes that they didn’t know what they were doing in 2009, did they also not know what they were doing in 2012?”

The union leader compares Nigeria’s tertiary education with a cancer patient. He said no palliative measure could help heal cancer, pointing out that the patient will die.

“Begging will not bring any solution. Nigerians should rather beg government to face this agreement squarely and implement it. That is where our future lies,” Aremu said.

He said senators could also cut their allowances and contribute them to education for the benefit of all citizens.

The union also urged the National Assembly to go beyond “begging” ASUU to call off its strike, but plug spending leakages in government to allow for provision of needed infrastructure in the universities.