Some undergraduates have pleaded with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to put them into consideration and suspend the over eight-month strike.
The students who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria in Enugu on Thursday, expressed sadness over the protracted nature of the strike while appealing to the leadership of ASUU to suspend the industrial action.
Some of the students said they had become tired and frustrated due to the time wasted any academic achievement.
They added that the strike will extend their stay in the university more than necessary.
ASUU embarked on strike in March 2020 owing to demands for improved funding for public universities and renegotiation of the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement.
Others are outstanding earned academic allowances, inclusion in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), and the constitution of Visitation Panels to Federal Universities.
Augustine Azubike, a law student at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, said he was appealing to the university lecturers to consider the future of the students and to return to work.
Azubike added that the incessant strike embarked upon by the lecturers was affecting the quality of university education in the country.
Another university student, Ann Chukwu, of Linguistic Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka expressed worry over the lingering strike, adding that her private business, located within the university, had been static since the strike started.
“My business, which is within the university premises has been static since the lecturers embarked on strike and the business has been the source of income for my school and accommodation fees,” Ude lamented.
Daniel Onyekachukwu, a mechanical engineering student, from UNN, said the incessant strikes by public universities’ workers had altered the academic calendar and the students’ time of graduation.
“Our lecturers and government should consider students from poor families, whose parents are not financially buoyant enough to send their children and wards to private and foreign universities,” Onyekachukwu appealed.
Joe Ezike of the Department of Psychology, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka said he was unhappy over the strike as his rent had expired.
“My anger over the strike is that the money I paid for my off-campus accommodation before the strike has expired without proper use of the room,” Ezike complained.
NAN