The National Officers’ Council (NOC) of Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has called on the Federal Government to address lingering issues between the union and the government.
Dr Smart Olugbeko, President of COEASU disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja, on Tuesday. Olugbeko said the running of the Colleges was being done by their own paltry Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
He said, this development had watered-down standards in colleges and demotivated both staff and students as there were inadequate lecture rooms, ill-equipped laboratories, obsolete library, and unconducive learning environment.
“The Union in its characteristic disposition to peaceful resolution of issues has between August and December 2021 met with the Minister, the Permanent Secretary, Directors, and other officials of government that have roles in addressing the lingering issues between the Union and the government several times.
“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 in Nigeria.
“And the Union has put these among others in the front burner for government to quickly resolve them,” he said.
He urged the government to wade into action and resolve these issues. Olugbeko added that the Federal Government in 2013 constituted a Presidential Committee to assess the needs of Colleges of Education, adding that the report was submitted since 2014.
“The team that submitted the report indicated that N391,086,738,636.00, which was later reviewed in 2017 by the Federal Ministry of Education to N465,599,691,914.18, would be needed to reposition Colleges of Education in Nigeria for better performance and for national development.
“The Federal Government citing paucity of fund in 2018 agreed to release N15 billion to revitalise Colleges of Education in Nigeria.
“The Union has been consistent in mounting pressure on government to release the fund to the colleges to meet their urgent needs hampering teaching and learning,” he said.
He added that the various efforts made by the union to make government live up to its promise had not yielded any positive result.
According to him, the union has been careful in deploying the instrumentality of strike to resolve the issues which they believed could be resolved through dialogue.
“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 issues and has mistaken our understanding for weakness.
“The Union is therefore calling on the Federal Government to quickly commence the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement with the union and release the N15 billion Revitalisation Fund to our Colleges,” he said.
He added that the union would in the next few weeks call the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting to take necessary actions as permissible by the Trade Union Act if government refused to do the needful.
