A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Prof. Haruna Yerima, has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to urgently resolve the ongoing dispute between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to prevent it from tarnishing his administration’s image.
Prof. Yerima made the appeal in a statement issued on Sunday in Abuja, warning that allowing the crisis to linger could undermine the President’s reform agenda and the confidence of Nigerian youths.
He cautioned President Tinubu against repeating the mistakes of previous administrations whose inability to address university lecturers’ grievances led to prolonged strikes that crippled academic activities across public universities.
“Mr President, as a realist, you are fully aware of the infrastructural decay in our public universities. The student-teacher and infrastructure ratio is not encouraging. These are facts, and this is what ASUU is fighting for,” Yerima said.
The former House of Representatives member noted that the economic reforms initiated by the Tinubu administration were taking a toll on university lecturers, many of whom, he said, earn meagre salaries that could barely cover basic living expenses.
“What professors in Nigerian universities earn monthly is peanut compared to their workload. The salary can’t pay their basic utilities, let alone school fees and medical bills,” he stated.
Yerima emphasized that most of the President’s political support base comprises young Nigerians in higher institutions, urging him not to jeopardize their future by allowing the strike to persist.
“Don’t repeat the mistakes made by late President Muhammadu Buhari, who recorded the second-longest ASUU strike in Nigerian history. It is possible to address all the reasonable agreements reached with ASUU once and for all. You have the capacity and wherewithal to do just that,” he added.
He further noted that the government’s broader economic goals, including the aspiration to make Nigeria a trillion-dollar economy, could not be achieved without a well-educated youth population forming the backbone of the nation’s workforce.
Yerima expressed confidence that President Tinubu would act decisively to resolve the long-standing ASUU crisis and restore stability to the education sector.
