The Committee of Vice-chancellors of Nigerian universities on Thursday appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to take over and speed up discussions with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Senior Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, and other unions currently on strike.
The academic staff in public universities have been on strike in Nigeria since February this year, in protest over the government’s failure to implement agreements with the union on staff remuneration and funding of the institutions.
They have been joined along the way by non-teaching staff of the universities, who are also protesting against poor conditions of service for them.
Appealing to the president under the aegis of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, they explained that their all was necessitated by the effect of the strike on both students and the institutions.
“We plead that drastic action is taken to stem the haemorrhage that the system is currently witnessing. For the sake of our children and our society, we need a decisive decision,” the Chairman of CVCNU, Prof. Samuel Edoumiekumo, said.
Government teams led by the Minister of Labour and Employment have failed to reach a compromise with the striking lecturers after several meetings.
The chairman was speaking on Thursday in Abuja at the public presentation of the Model Intellectual Property for Nigerian universities.
The work was produced through a collaboration between the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) and the CVCNU, with the support of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Office of Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP).
Prof Edohmiekuno further explained that the process leading to the presentation of the intellectual property policy document began in 2020, when the when the NCC and the CVCNU met to exchange ideas on possible areas of cooperation.
According to him, “intellectual property became the focal point of the deliberation given its essential role in the academic operations of universities in particular and the principal role of ideas in a knowledge-driven economy and society”.
He recalled that “over the years, there have been several attempts by the Copyright Commission, which is the regulatory body, to ensure that academic institutions properly codify their intellectual property policies to conform with the World Intellectual Property format”.
