Sack Education Minister Now, NANS Tells FG

Supervising Minister of Education,
Nyesom Wike

The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has called for the sack of the supervising minister of education, Nyesom Wike, over his inability to properly advise the government on the lingering misunderstanding between it (government) and lecturers of polytechnics and colleges of education which has led to the current prolonged strike.

The association made the call in Abuja after an emergency meeting of student union presidents of all colleges of education which held at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) College of Education in Zuba, to look at the plight of students of polytechnics and college of education, describing the minister as incompetent to resolve the issues.

In a communique signed by the FCT NANS president, FCT Chapter, Comrade Adediwura Adesina, the students said they were set to stage a mass protest in Abuja from today (16th January) if the federal government failed to meet the demands of College of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) and Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic (ASUP).

Speaking with journalists after the emergency meeting, Adesina said that ASUP had been on strike for over three months while COEASU joined them two weeks ago, adding that while the federal government met the demands of ASUU, it refused to meet those of ASUP and COEASU, giving the impression that the federal government did not have regard polytechnics and colleges of education.

“We have gone through the demands made by our lecturers and it is not different from what ASUU made and the government has resolved it.

We are convinced that if the government can meet the demands of our lecturers in polytechnics and colleges of education, it will go a long way to standardise the educational system in Nigeria and present our education in better image compared to other developed countries.

“We are demanding the removal of the supervising minister of education, because we realised that he is very weak. We have written several letters to him to end this strike, he failed to work on any one. We will be very happy if the federal government can remove him and put a competent education minister. We do not want supervising minister in our ministry,” he stated.

The SUG president of College of Education, Zuba, Comrade Abdulkadiri Musa said the students’ union adopted the decision to give the federal government the ultimatum for it to know that polytechnics and colleges of education students were as important as university students and if the government could resolve the problem of ASUU, they should do the same to ASUP and COEASU, or be ready to face the students’s mass protest in the next seven days.

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