The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has said for the recurring industrial actions by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to end, politicians and government officials must be banned from sending their children to foreign and private universities.
HURIWA described the quick resort to strike by ASUU as “lazy and irrational” since its members can as well adopt other proactive and constructive alternatives to strikes like publicising the schools and names of Children of Nigerian public office holders schooling in Western Europe, Canada and the United States of America.
HURIWA National Coordinator Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement on Wednesday, added that ASUU should write protest letters to those schools informing them that parents of their students of Nigerian origin who are in charge of public affairs have sabotaged University education and have therefore decided to fund their children’s academic activities from “stolen public funds of Nigerians.”
Onwubiko emphasised that until the children of public officers have no educational alternative both at home and abroad, the perennial strike by public university lecturers won’t be earnestly resolved by those in power.
He advocated what it called constructive blackmail of Government officials by the Academic Staff Union of Universities as a possible strategy to compel the central government to honour the promises and agreements reached between the government and ASUU.
He further said that for a country with over 40 million out-of-school children, prolonged stay out of tertiary institutions by youths would fill the crime pool of bandits, ritualists, armed robbers, prostitutes, amongst others.
He said, “the Federal Government which is saddled with the provision of quality education has failed woefully. It is more pathetic that government officials including the two education ministers have maintained indifference in meeting ASUU’s demand once and for all and not in piecemeal.
“To think that the present government has eight years to address the matter and it has failed to do so in the last seven years is unthinkable.
“The reason, however, is not farfetched; every now and then, politicians and government officials flaunt photos of the matriculation and the graduation of the children in first-class universities abroad and a very few in private universities back home unaffected by the perennial industrial actions by ASUU and other unions in tertiary institutions.
“They do this at the chagrin of abandoned Nigerian students back home who are forced out of school and their stay of four or five years elongated to over seven years due to ASUU strikes.
“HURIWA posits that the National Assembly must be resolute and make laws banning politicians from sending their wards overseas for studies so that all hands can be on the deck to resolve ASUU lingering crisis.
“Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb if ASUU strike is allowed to linger as there are connections between rising criminality and out-of-school students. The government must make hay while the sun shines.
“HURIWA has also warned that the strike would push thousands of students into such crimes like yahoo-yahoo and to be available for active recruitment to carry out terrorism.
“The continuous closure of Public tertiary institutions is a grave threat to national security interests of Nigeria and must be brought to an end immediately.”
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