The Middle Belt Movement for Justice and Peace, MBMJP, has urged the Federal Government to take urgent steps to resolve its lingering dispute with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, to avert a looming nationwide protest by aggrieved students similar to the 2020 EndSARS protests.
The group warned that the grumbling among students across the country who are obviously not happy with the manner the Federal Government is handling the dispute with ASUU should be a warning signal.
According to a statement issued Monday in Makurdi by the Convener of MBMJP, Joe Bukka, the “Federal Government’s outright indifference to demands of ASUU despite sustained calls by the union on the government to act ahead of the one month warning strike which fell on deaf ears was indicative of a government that is oblivious of the challenges of the people.”
The group insisted that the Federal Government might have to contend with frustrated Nigerian students who might pour into the streets across the country “to demand a better deal and respect for the social contract the government entered with the people.
“From the reports of heightening tension in students’ communities in the various cities across the country over the ASUU strike we do not need a soothsayer to tell us that university students might pour into the streets to demand a better deal from the Federal Government.
“The Government should therefore be prepared for another round of EndSARS protests because that is where we are heading to at the moment or take urgent steps to avert it by amicably resolving the dispute.
“The Federal Government must realize that our youths including parents are tired of the lack of commitment on its part to ensure that our public tertiary institutions get the attention they deserve.
“Parents pay so much to accommodate their children outside the campuses because of lack of hostel accommodation for the students in the universities and all that money goes to waste because of incessant strikes.
“This is aside the years wasted by the students on courses that ordinarily should last four or five years; sometimes the students spend as much seven to eight years in the universities that are underfunded by our present day leaders who benefited from these institutions in the past.”
“It is really sad that those who are what they are today because they went through the public universities are deliberately making frantic efforts to kill that sector to probably deny the children of the poor the benefits of university education. But they are making a big mistake because this set of children might revolt against these tendencies and nobody knows how it will end.”