Colleges of Education Staff Union Begins Strike over N441bn Funding Shortfall

Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has ordered its members to immediately withdraw their services.

The union claimed that federal government has failed to provide the outstanding N441 billion resulting from the received needs assessment of the federal colleges of education.

It stated that with what is happening in the education sector, where all the unions are embarking on strike over poor funding and neglect, the federal government has disappointed Nigerians.

Addressing a press conference yesterday in Abuja, COEASU President, Nuhu Ogirima, said after series of efforts through several correspondences to get the federal government to attend to the demands of the federal colleges of education in the country failed to yield results, the union was left with no other option than to commence a series of actions which will lead to full blown nationwide strike as soon as school reopens.

He said the National Executive Committee of the union would be meeting to approve further actions to compel the government to respond to their demands, which he said included poor funding and neglect of infrastructures of the institutions.

Speaking on the inadequate funding of federal colleges of education in the country, Ogirima said the totality of allocation to colleges of education relatively to other sister institutions was appalling, especially from 2006 to 2008.

“While the relative huge allocation to the university sub-sector in the period can be understood for obvious reasons of their enormous responsibilities and quite divergent services, that of the polytechnics, with similar conditions of service and related infrastructure with colleges of education, remains higher till date,” he said.