Former Nigeria President, Goodluck Jonathan has disclosed how his administration fought a strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in a day.
The ex-president noted he resolved a four-month-old strike by the aforementioned body at the 70th birthday celebration of Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, organised by The Kukah Centre on Wednesday in Abuja.
Public university lecturers have been on strike since February 14 owing to what they described as federal government’s “failure” to meet their outlined demands.
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Reacting, Jonathan said;
“The society we are managing is complex, now we are talking about ASUU strike, during my time too, ASUU had four months of strike, different committees were meeting and meeting and nothing was working. I said how can our children stay out of school for four months? So I had to call a meeting of all the leadership of ASUU.
I presided over the meeting with my vice president, the Attorney General was there, I said that that night we must solve the problem. The Attorney General was there, Second to the Government of the Federation was there, the ministers of education were there, the labor ministers were there the finance ministers, everybody that has to do with it.
And I thought that my being there would help us to do things quickly. But we spent the whole night, before we finished on like 5:30am Before we concluded and the strike was called off, so there were issues.”
Jonathan added that Bishop Kukah’s doesn’t mind criticising leaders when they’re wrong, including himself regardless of his friendship with them.
