JUST IN: COEASU FCET, Gusau suspends strike, apologises to students

The College of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) at the Federal College of Education Technical (FCET) in Gusau, Zamfara State, has unconditionally suspended its strike action, emphasizing that the return of academic activities is essential.

The three-month-long COEASU FCET Gusau strike was called off today, Thursday, following a lengthy meeting held by union members at the college in Gusau, the state capital.

Addressing newsmen shortly after the meeting, Mr. Muktar Abdullahi, a member of the academic union FCET Gusau, apologized to parents, guardians, and students for the inconvenience caused during the over three-month strike.

“Let me first of all start by apologizing to students. We will surmount the long absence of academic activities. Certainly, academic activities have resumed from now. What happened has happened; the full resumption of academics is sacrosanct,” he said.

Acco

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rding to him, the decision to call off the strike was reached unconditionally. Union members reached an agreement after the meeting and were able to resolve the issues at stake in the college.

Earlier, the coalition of Zamfara State civil society and other well-wishers of the Federal College of Education Technical Gusau (FCET) recently staged a protest over what they called the anti-progress stance of the College of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) chapter of the college.

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Speaking on behalf of the coalition, Alhaji Nasiru Garba expressed their solidarity with Hajiya Hauwa’u Mukhtar Abdul Karim, the substantive and only female and indigenous provost since the creation of FCET Gusau in 1988.

According to him, some members of the embattled union do not have the college’s best interests at heart. As a result, they invited their co-union members from over eight states to assist them in their opposition.

He said, “Some academic staff of the college do not want the college to be led by a substantive provost. They always want to lead the institution in an acting capacity as caretakers, which is very bad. By doing so, the school will never progress.”

He called on the federal government under the Minister of Education to hasten the immediate transfer of the COEASU members to other federal colleges of education to allow the provost to continue the good work she has started. He added that the community and the Coalition of Civil Society are behind the leadership of the first substantive indigenous provost, Dr. Hauwau Muktar Abdulkarim, in the state.