ASUU strike: Idle students take up menialjobs

Some undergraduates in Kaduna have ventured into various vocations to keep them occupied as the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) persists, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports. Some of them who spoke with NAN on Friday in Kaduna said that they had to find something to do, to keep their minds occupied and avoid trouble. Grace Ocholi, a 300-level student of English at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, said she secured a temporary job as a fuel pump attendant at a petrol station in Sabon-Tasha area of the city to enable her earn some money until the end of the strike. “Everyone in my house go out every morning to work, and my younger sisters go to school while I stay home and sleep awaiting for their return. “I am not okay with staying idle so I decided to engage in something useful,” Grace said. Seun Ali, an HND Computer Science student of Kaduna Polytechnic told NAN that he worked at a friend’s barbing saloon to earn some money instead of staying idle at home. Another student, Henry Samuel of Mass Communication Department, Ahmadu Bello University, said he was assisting his father in selling tiles before he was admitted to the university. Samuel said he had to continue manning the business until the end of the lecturers’ strike. “So instead of wasting time waiting for the prolonged strike to end, I returned to continue from where I stopped,” he said. The students advised their colleagues to engage in something meaningful while the strike lasted, so as not to fall into the temptation of going into crime due to idleness. NAN recalls that ASUU had been on strike since June over the non-implementation of a 2009 agreement it entered with the Federal Government on the funding of public universities.