ASUU'S AIM IS TO BRING DOWN JONATHAN'S GOVERNMENT - GOV. SUSWAM

Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam, has alleged that the strike
embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was aimed at bringing down the government of President Goodluck Jonathan. Suswam, who is the chairman of the Federal Government's Needs
Assessment Committee...
for Nigerian Universities said: "ASUU's
leadership is determined that PDP government must be brought down and
the easiest way to do it is ensuring that every family is affected.
And so, the Nigerian family will simply say, 'look, to keep this
government in place, our children will be out of school. So it is
better that we kick this government out and bring another government.'
"That is all they are doing. There is nothing to it. Otherwise, the
Federal Government has touched on all the requests that led to the
strike by ASUU. They have no basis rather than playing politics with
the strike and then holding the nation hostage and destroying the
future of this country."
Speaking further, Suswam said, "I feel that if it is not that they
have introduced politics, you know people can't say that they don't
have political leanings. ASUU's leadership, we know where they are
standing in this whole political process. They can't deny that they
are sympathising with opposition parties and they are determined to
destroy the PDP government. That is what they are doing and it is
nothing more than that."
The Benue State governor, who had attended several meetings with ASUU
on government side, said the nine issues raised by the academic union
had been attended to, though not 100 per cent.
He said: "I think that it is unfair. And I keep saying it that they
have introduced politics into it. It's purely political. There is no
way that any person can say any other thing. It is just to portray the
government in bad light so that people will say that you have a
government that is not capable of keeping the children in school. That
is pure politics. There is nothing more to it because if you present
nine issues and all of them have been attended to, even if not
attended to 100 per cent, at least you should appreciate that efforts
have been made and you should say that it is okay because this has
been done.
"There were a lot of issues that were presented. Constitution of
governing councils has been done; they said they should help them set
up pension administrator, N250 million was given to them; they said
they wanted the properties of universities handed over to them,
government said go and form companies and compete, we will do that.
You know a couple of other things, the need assessment, an initial
N100 billion has been distributed.
"The retirement age, they say they don't want to retire at 65, it has
been approved, all the academic staff in the university retire at 70.
Earned allowance, out of N57 billion, N30 billion has been given."
Suswam said the issue that had kept the universities closed were not
because government could not pay salaries but the earned allowances,
adding, "Academic staffs of universities collect more than civil
servants in this country…. They have been paying that consistently and
nobody is being owed salary. These are issues of allowance.
"This earned allowance; it is not every lecturer in the university
that is entitled to it. So, why must it be a reason why you keep the
children out of school? It doesn't make sense and I am surprised most
Nigerian are looking at this differently. If in a nation, the whole
leaders of tomorrow are being kept out of school, then its means that
in future, you can imagine the kind of leaders we would have."
Suswam spoke of how seriously he took his responsibility as the
chairman of the Needs Assessment committee, saying, "Out of this three
weeks, may be I spent like just four days in Benue because I was
determined that we must raise money for this Needs Assessment. And
within those three weeks, that committee which I chaired was able to
raise the N100 billion, which has since been shared. Once we shared
that money, this people (ASUU) moved to other areas; which is issue of
earned allowances, which was being handled by the SGF", he told
Thisday in an interview.

Thisday.