Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam, has
alleged that the strike embarked upon by the
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)
was aimed at bringing down the government
of President Goodluck Jonathan.
In an interview with THISDAY, Suswam, who is
the chairman of the Federal Government's
Needs Assessment Committee for Nigerian
Universities said: "ASUU’s leadership is
determined that PDP government must be
brought down and the easiest way to do it is
ensuring that every family is affected. And so,
the Nigerian family will simply say, ‘look, to
keep this government in place, our children
will be out of school. So it is better that we
kick this government out and bring another
government.’
"That is all they are doing. There is nothing to
it. Otherwise, the Federal Government has
touched on all the requests that led to the
strike by ASUU. They have no basis rather
than playing politics with the strike and then
holding the nation hostage and destroying the
future of this country."
Buttressing his claim, Suswam said: "I feel
that if it is not that they have introduced
politics, you know people can't say that they
don't have political leanings. ASUU’s
leadership, we know where they are standing
in this whole political process. They can't
deny that they are sympathising with
opposition parties and they are determined to
destroy the PDP government. That is what
they are doing and it is nothing more than
that."
The Benue State governor, who had attended
several meetings with ASUU on government
side, said the nine issues raised by the
academic union had been attended to, though
not 100 per cent.
He said: "I think that it is unfair. And I keep
saying it that they have introduced politics
into it. It's purely political. There is no way
that any person can say any other thing. It is
just to portray the government in bad light so
that people will say that you have a
government that is not capable of keeping the
children in school. That is pure politics. There
is nothing more to it because if you present
nine issues and all of them have been
attended to, even if not attended to 100 per
cent, at least you should appreciate that
efforts have been made and you should say
that it is okay because this has been done.
"There were a lot of issues that were
presented. Constitution of governing councils
has been done; they said they should help
them set up pension administrator, N250
million was given to them; they said they
wanted the properties of universities handed
over to them, government said go and form
companies and compete, we will do that. You
know a couple of other things, the need
assessment, an initial N100 billion has been
distributed.
"The retirement age, they say they don't want
to retire at 65, it has been approved, all the
academic staff in the university retire at 70.
Earned allowance, out of N57 billion, N30
billion has been given."
Suswam said the issue that had kept the
universities closed were not because
government could not pay salaries but the
earned allowances, adding, "Academic staffs
of universities collect more than civil servants
in this country.... They have been paying that
consistently and nobody is being owed salary.
These are issues of allowance.
"This earned allowance; it is not every
lecturer in the university that is entitled to it.
So, why must it be a reason why you keep the
children out of school? It doesn't make sense
and I am surprised most Nigerian are looking
at this differently. If in a nation, the whole
leaders of tomorrow are being kept out of
school, then its means that in future, you can
imagine the kind of leaders we would have."
Recalling his involvement in the efforts to
resolve the crisis in the Nigerian university
system, Suswam said when he was invited by
the President to chair the Needs Assessment
part of the ASUU strike, he took the
responsibility very seriously.
"Out of this three weeks, may be I spent like
just four days in Benue because I was
determined that we must raise money for this
Needs Assessment. And within those three
weeks, that committee which I chaired was
able to raise the N100 billion, which has
since been shared. Once we shared that
money, this people (ASUU) moved to other
areas; which is issue of earned allowances,
which was being handled by the SGF", he said.
Source :thisday
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