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ASUU  President Dr  Nasir   Fagge , left, and Nigerian Minister of Education  Nyesom   Wike . ( ASUU ; Facebook) The Nigerian federal government called on the Academic Staff Union of Universities ( ASUU ) to end its several-month-long strike and accused the opposition All Progressives Congress of politicizing and manipulating the industrial action. “By the time we finish with the strike, the crisis will take its toll on states as many of them won’t be able to pay allowances,” Minister of Information  Labaran  Maku said, adding that the strike is starting to damage the Nigerian education sector,  reported the  Osun  Defender. He said that some states might not be able to pay allowances on lecturers by the time the strike ends. Maku also accused the All Progressives Congress of manipulating the strike. “I know  ASUU  very well.  ASUU  went into the strike out of the conviction that they would get more resources for the universities but opportunists in the [Congress] who

The nature of two holes on the late Professor Festus Iyayi’s body gives life to suspicions by his colleagues that he may have been shot. Along with grief, anger will be the dominant emotion when Professor Festus Iyayi is buried this week in his hometown, Ugbegun in Edo State. The two feelings have mixed, predictably with unsavoury outcomes, since the former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, died on 12 November in an auto accident on the Lokoja-Abuja Expressway. Iyayi was travelling to Kano in the company of three other ASUU members for a meeting on the ongoing strike by members of the union when a police escort van in the convoy of the Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State rammed into the bus the university teachers were travelling. Iyayi died instantly, while three his colleagues were seriously injured. Wada, who was severely injured in an accident involving his convoy last year, was widely criticised by ASUU and the wider public for his failure to lea

The striking Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU) has rejected the Nigerian government’s ‘Back to Class’ order, describing it as a political blackmail. The government had on November 28 threatened to sack lecturers that failed to resume duties by December 4. Responding to the seven day ultimatum issued by the Supervising Minister of Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, the union maintained that it would not be cowed by the threat. “We shall never succumb to this. Our country is our union’s constituency. We shall bow only to what we, as academics, are convinced will serve the interest of Nigeria and its people,” the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Mr. Nasir Faggae, told reporters on Monday in Abuja. The Federal Government, in a meeting with the uinon, agreed to deposit part of the funds that the union had requested for the revitalisation of public universities in Nigeria to meet international standard. President Goodluck Jonathan and the