University teachers end six months strike

Nigerian university lecturers have ended a six-month strike to demand improved government funding of education in compliance with the ruling of an industrial arbitration panel. The strike had brought teaching to a halt in the universities of Africa's most populous nation. Dipo Fashina, president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), said on Monday the strike had been called off to comply with a May 28 ruling of the Industrial Arbitration Panel. ASUU went on strike in December, accusing the government of reneging on its June 2001 agreement to improve the level of funding for education in general and universities in particular. The union also took exception to the government's dismissal of 49 lecturers from the University of Ilorin, in central Nigeria, for their role in a previous stoppage. The union launched the strike in protest at President Olusegun Obasanjo's to cut education spending from 11.2 percent of total government spending in 1999 to just 1.8 percent this year. It pointed out that the cut ran counter to UNESCO's recommendation that education should account for 26 percent of government spending. Obasanjo has in turn accused the university lecturers of making unreasonable demands. The president, who was re-elected for a second four-year term in April, said in a television broadcast on Sunday that ASUU's demands would cost about US $3.3 billion or half of Nigeria's entire annual budget. Nigeria is applying an International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programme which has resulted in a massive devaluation, a wave of privatisations and the withdrawal of state subsidies. Universities have been among those worst hit by the belt tightening exercise.