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Group supports 5-day warning strike by SSANU, NASU, NAAT
- Says it’s another sign that Buhari has failed on public education
The group was of the view that a warning strike is an action that presupposes the possibility of a bigger and longer action(s) in future, especially, if government remains intransigent. It maintained that, therefore, a warning strike is a preparatory action whose essential purpose is to signal to the government that the workers are ready to fight but more importantly to prepare the fighting forces, educate them and mobilize them for the bigger struggles impending.
“It is our view that this 5-day warning strike can only be adjudged successful if side by side with workers effectively withdrawing their services, public programs like congresses, mass meetings, symposium, rallies, media campaign and leafleting are organized. This kind of public activities will allow the unions to take their case to the students and the general public thus exposing government insincerity with a view to securing the support of the critical mass of the students and the working people which would prove useful if at some time later the unions are forced by continuous government intransigence to embark on indefinite strikes or actions of similar nature,” Soweto and Omole declared.
They contended that not only does the 2017 appropriation bill contains one of the lowest allocations to education in recent times, there have been too many closures of Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education over the past 19 months. it was narrated that Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) has been shut for eight months, as well as the University of Lagos, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba Akoko (AAUA) and others.
They lamented that the Buhari/APC administration, just like the Jonathan/PDP administration before it, sees public education as a business instead of a social responsibility to the people.
“This is why anti-poor policies of education underfunding, privatization, commercialization and hike in fees which were the ruinous policies of past regimes have been preserved and are now being implemented with gusto by the Buhari administration,” they decried.