ASUU strike: Don’t disrupt political activities, Lawan tells students

The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has asked Nigerian students not to disrupt political activities over the strike action by the Academic Union of Universities, ASUU.

Lawan said this when the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, held a meeting with him in his office in Abuja.

The Senate President also said that lawmakers were going to work towards ending the strike as soon as possible.

He said, “I want to advise, I don’t think it will be necessary to disrupt political activities. We shouldn’t do that and we don’t need to do that.

“What we need to do is to continue to follow the path of consultation, consolidation and avoid confrontation. It is when you emphasise consultation, that it’s much easier for us to find something that you can consolidate.”

He continued, “Your prayer is that you want the Federal government and ASUU back to negotiate and resolve the issues. We have taken this prayer. We have endorsed it and we will work on it as quickly as possible.

“It is an opportunity for me also to appeal to ASUU to suspend this strike period because there is no way ASUU can negotiate with the Federal Government when it is on strike. So it is an opportunity for us to have them, at least create a window, suspend the strike for a certain period and let us see how far we can go.”

“I want to be very positive that we are going to resolve this issue as soon as possible by the Grace of God,” Lawan said.

He pointed out that the agreement which was signed 2009, being the Crux of the matter, was not properly thought out before it was signed.

“Somebody just wanted ASUU to go back to the classroom and just signed everything there. We must understand that there are things that when we promise we should do, we must do,” Lawan said.