The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has threatened to take action if the federal government fails to immediately commence the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement with the Union and release the N15 billion Revitalisation Fund to Colleges of education.
The Union in a statement by its president, Comrade Smart Olugbeko, said the government citing paucity of fund in 2018 agreed to release N15 billion to revitalise Colleges of Education in Nigeria.
He said various efforts made by the Union to make government live up to its promise has not yielded any positive result.
He explained that COEASU has been careful in deploying the instrumentality of strike to resolve the issues which it believes can be resolved through dialogue.
He said, “but it seems this government has preference for crisis as has shown in its dealings with unions that it has no respect for peaceful resolution of issues.
“COEASU is a teacher-training Colleges based union, all our members are professional teachers, we have perfect understanding of what disruption in academic calendar through strike action can cause the students mentally, socially, and psychologically, thus our cautious approach to the use of strike.
“However, government has demonstrated total disrespect for our maturity in handling issue and has mistaken our understanding for weakness.”
According to Comrade Olugbeko, the issues of Renegotiation of the 2009 Agreement, the crises being created by the imposition of IPPIS and the release of the N15 billion Revitalisation Fund are critical to development of Colleges of Education.
He explained that “the Federal Government in 2013 constituted a Presidential Committee to assess the needs of Colleges of Education in Nigeria, the Report submitted in 2014 by the Team indicated that the sum of Three Hundred and Ninety One Billion, Eighty Six Million, Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight thousand, Six Hundred and Thirty Six Naira (N391,086,738,636.00), which was later reviewed in 2017 by the Federal Ministry of Education to Four Hundred and Fifty Six Billion, Five Hundred and Ninety-Nine Million, Nine Hundred and Fourteen Naira, Eighteen Kobo (N465,599,691,914.18), would be needed to reposition Colleges of Education in Nigeria for better performance and for national development.
“The government has totally abandoned its responsibility of adequately funding teacher education as the government has left Colleges of Education in Nigeria to continue to suffer from infrastructural decay while the running of the Colleges is being done by the paltry Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the Colleges.
“This attitude of government has further watered-down standard in our colleges and demotivated both staff and students as there are inadequate lecture rooms, ill-equipped laboratory, obsolete library, and unconducive learning environment.”
He said the Union will in the next few weeks call its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting to take necessary actions as permissible by the Trade Union Act if government fails to do the needful.
