A rights group, the Education Rights Campaign(ERC) has warned the Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC) not to suspend the
planned national protest by the organised labour over the lingering Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike without achieving demands.
It warned NLC that the usual practice of calling off or suspension of planned strike without positive outcomes will not be tolerated.
ERC in a statement jointly signed by Ogunjinmi Isaac, Deputy National Coordinator and Adaramoye Michael Lenin, the National Mobilization Officer,cautioned the labour unions against calling off the protest before the day or without achieving results and called for independent preparations to forestall treachery.
The group implored the unions, students and parents to draw in as many forces as possible and to ensure active mobilization and urged the NLC to direct its state councils to convene state planning meetings within the next few days
It added: “We of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) welcome the decision of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to embark on a two-day national protest on 26 and 27 July 2022 to force the government to meet the demands of ASUU and other University unions. Although coming very late, it is a step in the right direction. The ERC has been at the forefront of calling on NLC and TUC to embark on a series of mass actions to defend public education from the claws of the capitalist ruling class who are hell-bent on not just ruining it but also taking it out of the reach of children of the working masses.
“The ERC also calls on Nigerian students, students unions, radical students groups, NANS and civil society organizations to answer the call of the NLC by mobilizing to join organized labour on 26 and 27 July 2022 for the protest. To draw in as many forces as possible and to ensure active mobilization, the ERC urges the NLC to direct its state councils to convene state planning meetings within the next few days.
“If the NLC calls off the protest before the set date, as is their usual practice, we ask that students, parents, education workers and workers generally should go on to protest independently for the reopening of schools and to make the federal government yield to the demands of the public university unions.
” To achieve this, we ask students, parents and workers across all states to start organizing independent protest committees that can work with the NLC state councils to organize the protest while remaining independent of it.
“While we consider NLC’s decision to embark on a protest in the right direction, we equally warn against last-minute suspension of the protest without any democratic discussion or any concrete resolution of the crisis,” ERC started.
The group said the warning was premised on practice by NLC to suspend strikes without any resolution of the crisis the action was intended to resolve.
It recalled that NLC and TUC thwarted the hope of redress by Nigerians as it suspended protest over the planned removal of fuel subsidy in January, saying a similar disappointment also played out in 2020 when the NLC called off its planned strike scheduled to commence on September 28 that year.
The group also advocated for the conviction of a national summit on the ASUU strike and the deteriorating state of public education.
It added:”Such a summit is to be constituted by pro-masses organizations, the trade unions, students’ unions and professional bodies like the NBA. Such a conference must be used to deliberate on the way forward and outline a line of actions beyond the planned protest by NLC.
“In the Education Rights Campaign (ERC), it is our clear belief that the crisis bedeviling the education sector requires proper funding of the sector at all levels. While we call for proper funding of the education sector, we also demand democratic management of institutions. By democratic management of institutions, we mean that students and workers play an active role indecision-making making organs of tertiary institutions through elected representatives of the unions.
“This may not be achieved without a struggle by the working masses, youth and students to wrest power from the capitalist ruling class and establish a socialist society where resources are democratically owned and managed by the working masses to meet the aspiration of Nigerians for free and quality education, decent quality of life and a better society,” the group added.
