With twelve days to the end of 2013, it has become imperative for us at Vanguard Learning to take stock of issues and events that shaped the nation’s education sector, while projecting the way forward.

The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) has said that it welcomes the decision of three trade unions – the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) – to embark on solidarity strike actions to compel the Federal Government to honour agreements signed with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

WHEN staff of the National Aviation Management Agency, NAMA, withdrew their services to protest failure of negotiations between their union and NAMA management on new salary scales the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission approved for them, last May 20, it was the third major disruption of air transport services in two months.

By September 1, the face-off between the Federal Government and Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, will be exactly in its third month. Unlike previous strikes, this particular one is still in its infancy. Students have been known to do a four-year course in eight years.

THERE are strong indications that the strike by polytechnics lecturers, under the aegis of Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, ASUP, may be called off today, as members of ASUP’s National Executive Council, NEC, hold an emergency meeting, to appraise the situation.

It seems the most effective way in getting government’s attention on any issue in Nigeria by its employees and other unions is to embark on industrial action, otherwise called strike.

The Federal Government, yesterday, begged the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, to return to classrooms, as the union insisted that the strike would continue unless agreements between it and government were implemented.