Federal government on Wednesday declared that it was impossible to accede to any more requests of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), otherwise, government may be forced to shut down.
The declaration came from Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, in response to reporters’ questions on the lingering industrial action by university lecturers.
He said it was sad and unfortunate that the lecturers were yet to return to work despite huge financial commitments the federal government had made to the tertiary education development.
The minister pointed out that education remains a priority for the government but other critical sectors of the economy and polity, like security and power, could not be ignored in order to deploy a quarter of the national budget to education as demanded by the aggrieved lecturers.
He recalled that government coffers were yet to recover from the 53.4 per cent increase in public salaries across board announced in 2010 which left a huge deficit in the annual budget of the country.
According to Maku: “This country belongs to all of us, if we all insist that every sector problem must be completely solved, we will down tools we will not work, then the country will stop working.
“If we say every particular problem we face in this country we will not work until it is resolved, then I’m sure there is no sector that will work. So, it is our country, we are partners with ASUU, we are friends, they are our patriots and we understand the critical role that the universities teachers are doing to create a new society that we are hoping to have.
“But at the same time, this is a reality question that we need to look at and we have to put the nation first. I know all of us desire more from the system but the truth is that there are limitations and from the limitations we have, we believe that ASUU really needs to do rethink and ensure that we reopen our universities because we are really feeling the pain of our children being at home and this indeed is completely avoidable”.
The minister explained further that “government has priorities, education remains number one priority and will continuously remain the number one priority of a developing country like Nigeria.
“There is no way we can avoid it, the quality of human capital is going to determine the future of our country. But at the same time, when you look at the environment today, we are dealing with the question of power, railway that had broken down many years ago, we are dealing with the issues of roads, of creating the enabling environment for industries to prosper”.
