Worried by the lingering Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, parents have asked the union leaders to make their demands public.
“Nigerians need to know the rationale behind the protracted strike. We need to know what they are fighting for,’’ some parents demanded in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
A parent, Mr Isaac Adua, argued that people had been left in the dark as to the motive behind “leaving the children to rot at home’’.
Adua, a civil servant, who said that his two boys had been at home, said the striking lecturers “should make parents and stakeholders understand their demands, know which of them had been met by government and table the outstanding issues in the court of public opinion.
“This is necessary so that we can decide if they have reasons strong enough to warrant the continuation of their action’’.
Adua said that until ASUU cleared itself, “they should shun whatever sinister motives they have and return to classes’’.
He alleged that the strike was losing its substance and destroying the very foundation it claimed it was trying to correct.
Another parent, Mr Dadi Maxwell, urged ASUU to consider the future of the students and return to work.
Maxwell, a bank executive, said that it was good for ASUU to make its demands public so that Nigerians would also assist the union in its case.
“It is also good for them to tell us what the Federal Government has so far conceded to them and what is left,’’ he said.
Another parent, Hajiya Larai Yuguda, a business woman, said that she had had no peace of mind since her daughter returned home and had been doing nothing.
“I fear for her safety and future and I know every parent caught in this war by ASUU understands the situation.
“Let ASUU take a bow when the ovation is still at its loudest because there is no telling what may happen in the nearest future if they remained adamant.’’
She pleaded with the striking lecturers to consider the plight of parents and students and call off the strike.
The strike, embarked upon more than three months ago, has crippled the university system with many groups staging demonstrations and calling for an end to it.
The latest protests came from the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations, market women, the National Association of Nigeria Students, Eduwatch Consult, an education interest group, among others.
