The College of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) at the Federal College of Education Technical (FCET) in Gusau, Zamfara State, has suspended its strike action unconditionally, emphasizing the importance of resuming academic activities.
The three-month-long COEASU 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, apologized to parents, guardians, and students for the inconvenience caused during the 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.
He explained that the decision to call off the strike was reached unconditionally, with union members resolving the issues at stake in the college.
Earlier, the coalition of Zamfara State civil society and other well-wishers of FCET Gusau recently staged a protest against what they described as the anti-progress stance of the COEASU chapter at the college.
Speaking on behalf of the coalition, Alhaji Nasiru Garba expressed their support for Hajiya Hauwa’u Mukhtar Abdul Karim, the substantive and only female and indigenous provost since the college’s establishment in 1988.
According to him, some members of the union do not have the college’s best interests at heart and invited co-union members from over eight states to support their opposition.
“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 said.
He called on the federal government under the Minister of Education to expedite the transfer of the COEASU members to other federal colleges of education, allowing the provost to continue her work. He added that the community and the Coalition of Civil Society support the leadership of Dr. Hauwau Muktar Abdulkarim, the first substantive indigenous provost in the state.
