The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said that no fewer than 50 letters were written between 2011 and 2012 to the presidency to avert the ongoing strike. ASUU president, Nasir Fagge, who was represented by, Olorunyomi Oju, a don, disclosed this at the 2013 World Human Rights Day celebration on Tuesday in Osogbo.
The occasion, which was organised by the Osun Civil Societies Coalition, was attended by representatives of government and human rights groups. He said that in spite of the efforts made by the union to resolve the issue of the 2009 agreement between it and the Federal Government, there was no response to its letters.
He decried the allocation of 8.9 per cent of the country’s budget to education as against 31 per cent Ghana commits to the same sector. The ASUU leader called for more attention to be given to education to address the myriad of challenges in the sector, especially the decay in education infrastructure.
Mr. Fagge, who lamented that the union had been on strike for the past five months in order to re-position education, noted that “education is a human right and not a privilege”. He said that education remained the right of every child and should not be delayed for any reason.
In a lecture, Yinka Muyiwa, a legal practitioner, said “government whether federal or state has the primary responsibility of making economic and social rights of the people a reality.’’ The lecture was titled; “The Economic and Social Rights of Nigerians: The Need for Conscious Revival.”
(NAN)
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