Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, on Tuesday appealed to members of the Academic Staff of Universities (ASUU) to suspend their nine-month-old industrial action.
The governor, according to a statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Olayinka Oyebode, made the call when he received members of the Board of Trustees of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation led by the former Governor of Niger State, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, in his office at Ado Ekiti.
He urged the university lecturers to consider the “children of ordinary Nigerians” attending the public universities in the country.
Fayemi also implored the Federal Government and relevant stakeholders in the education sector to have an urgent engagement with the leadership of ASUU in order to end the current impasse.
He charged the lecturers to look at the hardship the students and their parents are going through because of the strike that has kept the students at home for nine months.
The governor said: “We need to get to a point of convergence with ASUU, but I also think ASUU should begin to look at this from the position of their importance. It is the students of the ordinary Nigerians who attend the local universities. So, even if it is for the sake of ordinary Nigerians who have children in these universities and cannot afford to send their children to private universities or abroad.
“Whatever the areas are, we would like to engage them, not as Federal Government but as concerned parties at the level of government who feel that we can still work out an arrangement in which you don’t completely dictate to your employer how he pays your salaries.
“If an agreement has been entered into and if it is not going to be honoured, you owe a duty to urge the other party to review it consensually and then come up with something that is mutually acceptable to both sides.”
