ASUU Strike Unnecessary, Says JAMB Registrar

The Registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is- haq Oloyede, on Friday, urged the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to call off the ongoing industrial action by the university lecturers in the country.

Oloyede, who made the call in Ilorin, Kwara State, described the ongoing industrial strike action by ASUU members as unnecessary.

The former vice chancellor of the University of Ilorin, spoke during the presentation of multi-billion naira medical equipment to the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) for improved healthcare delivery in the facility by JAMB.

JAMB made the donation of the medical equipment in collaboration with a United States-based agency, Project Cure.

Oloyede, who said that incessant strike action by unions in the nation’s tertiary institutions was capable of causing irreparable damage on not just the students but also the nation, urging both the government and the unions to find ways of putting an end to the “unnecessary strike action”.

“While acknowledging the fact that the primary responsibility of reasonable (even if not adequate) funding of public health and education institutions lies on the

proprietors-the Government, may I seize this opportunity to call on the employers, university-based labour unions to appreciate the irreparable damage of incessant strikes on not just the students but also the nation,” he added.

The JAMB registrar said that the intervention of the agency in the area of healthcare delivery was to support government’s efforts aimed at addressing the huge medical infrastructural gap in the country.

He added that JAMB would continue to prune down its expenses through prudent management, adoption of relevant cost-saving technology, and other efficiency-strategies to free up resources to support major stakeholders such as the tertiary health and educational institutions in order to uplift the health and educational institutions.

He said that the intervention was for 12 benefiting health facilities in all the six geopolitical zones in the country.

The equipment donated to UITH include angle poise lamp, Ventilator, consumables, Mattress, OG couch, gynecology chair, treatment table, treadmill machine, crutches, ICU beds, urinary catheters, defibrillator machines, laparoscopy machines, needle and syringes, wheel chairs, Oxygen concentrator, suction machines, endoscopy machines, among others.

In his remarks, a former chairman of the JAMB, Dr. Emmanuel Ndukwe, described the medical intervention as the beginning of the journey towards checking medical tourism in Nigeria.

Earlier, the chief medical director of the UITH, Prof Abdullahi Yussuf, said that the medical equipment would help to provide necessary services to the hospital’s numerous clientele.

While thanking the JAMB’s registrar for his kind gesture, Yussuf said:” This is a novel and noble idea capable of helping the Nigerian masses. This is a happy event for me and the hospital. We are very happy to have it as the very first hospital to receive the equipment and to be commisioned among the 12 benefitting institutions.”