Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi, has urged the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to resolve the lingering crisis between them.
Sanusi made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York on the sidelines of a three-day Transforming Education Summit.
Sanusi said ASUU strike could be addressed through dialogue, noting that the union needed to know that the longer it stayed out of school, it was the students who would suffer for it.
“Government needs to recognise that teachers are human beings; we are in a country with high level of inflation and salary don’t take teachers anywhere and teaching is a profession that needs to be valued from lowest to highest.
“Our education employees are staff of health establishment too, what we don’t know is that we have lost so many academics, many people who go abroad to do PhD don’t come back.
“Many medical doctors working in Nigeria have gone abroad,’’ he said.
The former CBN boss, who was the 14th Emir of Kano, said brain drain had impacted negatively on the economy.
“It is a crisis because we need the doctors in Nigeria, we need the teachers in Nigeria because we have invested so much in training them.
“Both sides (ASUU and Federal Government) have a stake in sitting down and have a dialogue, making compromises, I believe it can be resolved in good faith,’’ he said.
Sanusi also urged the government to invest in education to encourage teachers to be at their best, adding that teachers were once highly respected in the society in time past, adding that “but now people underrate the value of education.
“What is happening now is that we have people who have moved into authority and who do not value education as the society is so much materialistic.
“It is all about money now and teachers are looked down upon because they don’t have money.
“Most of these teachers have option to do other courses but they chose to educate our children and contribute to our society.
“So, we need to look at our value system and go back to our traditional value system of respecting teachers and if we treat them with respect, we will get a lot from them,’’ he added.
