The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, on Saturday, said the leadership of the union suspended its meeting with the Federal Government meant to address the ongoing strike in the polytechnics because the government was not represented by top officials.
The National Vice President of ASUP, Mr Timothy Ogunseye, who said this in an interview added that none of the top government officials in the Ministry of Education was present at the meeting.
He said the low representation by the FG was considered to be a waste of time and lack of seriousness on the part of the government.
According to him, the leadership of ASUP has suspended the meeting until the government is ready to address the issues under contention.
Ogunseye said the government was not showing commitment to issues affecting polytechnics because the children of the influential persons in the country were not in the polytechnics.
He said, “We met on December 17, 2018 and we couldn’t conclude on the issues and another meeting was fixed for January 10. But it was put off because the minister of education was said to be away in Aso Rock Villa. He is the Secretary of Buhari’s Campaign Council.
The minister of state for education was said to be unavoidably absence.
The Permanent Secretary, Sunny Ochonu, was said to be indisposed. Even the Executive Secretary of NABTE, Adamu Kazaure, was said to be indisposed.
“They asked one Mr Ojo, who is the Director of Tertiary Education, to address us and we felt that was a low-level representation. We felt the absence of these four critical stakeholders was injurious to our sector; and for that reason, we couldn’t continue with the meeting and it was put off. We are still expecting their invitation.
“But the emergency NEC meeting of the union was held on Thursday, and we reviewed reports from various chapters. We agreed that the strike should continue until government can show some commitment.
“Of recent, they promised to give us N15bn revitalisation funds as a show of commitment and ASUP did not object to that. But up until now, that has not been done.”
Ogunseye said the salient issues, which forced the lecturers to declare an indefinite strike, were not pecuniary but how to make the government address the dilapidated structures and lack of instructional materials to teach students.
