The Academic Staff Union of
Universities, ASUU, has declared that it had no plans to suspend its ongoing
strike.
The union has been on strike for
eight weeks now.
ASUU said the federal government
had not shown any commitment to addressing its demands.
Speaking with reporters at ASUU,
University of Lagos secretariat, the National President of ASUU, Prof Biodun
Ogunyemi pointed out that since the start of the strike on November 4, the
union met six times with government agents and there was no clear commitment
from government to resolve the issues in contention.
Accompanied by the ASUU Lagos
zone Coordinator, Prof Olusiji Sowande, and other branch chairmen, Prof
Ogunyemi asked the President Muhammadu Buhari government to replace the
Chairman of the Renegotiation Committee on the FG/ASUU 2009 agreement, Dr. Wale
Babalakin, based on its experience during over one year of negotiation.
Ogunyemi said the government has
adopted the strategy of deceiving the public that progress was being made thus
a partial agreement had been reached between the government and the union.
He said, “Our expectation from a
very responsive and sincere government is that by now, all outstanding issues
would have been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. Unfortunately,
government is yet to show sincerity in addressing the problem.
“As at today, there are no
concrete commitments on the part of government to warrant considering the
suspension of this strike action, which we did all that was possible to avoid.
“Government should demonstrate
serious commitment to implementing the spirit and letters of the 2009 FG/ASUU
agreement, as well as the resulting 2013 MoU, for the rapid transformation of
Nigeria’s public universities for improved efficiency, infrastructural
development and global competitiveness.”
He further stated the purported
release of N20billion due for release in September/October 2017, which was
widely publicised by government, had not been confirmed to and had not been
received in any public universities.
He said the government had also
not made any commitment to payment of the outstanding five tranches of the
balance of N1.1trillion Needs Assessment intervention fund for revitalisation
of public universities.
The ASUU President regretted that
government declared that steps had been taken to address the injustice, payment
of EAA to its loyal members in University of Ilorin while that was yet to be
effected, stressing that government appeared to be paying lip service to the
issue.
The ASUU boss revealed that
“arrears of shortfalls in salaries had not been addressed and there was no
agreed date for the payment of the verified claims to the affected
universities.
“We have strong reasons to
believe that the continuation of Dr. Babalakin as the head of the renegotiation
with ASUU would not yield good fruit.
“He is ideologically fixated on
tuition fees and does not agree that education is a public good. ASUU strongly
objects to this.
“Our experience with Dr.
Babalakin for over 14 months tells us that Dr. Babalakin cannot relate
objectively to any of the issues in our demands at the negotiation table.
“We, therefore, once more call on
government to replace Dr. Babalakin as the chairman of the renegotiation
committee of the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement,” Ogunyemi stated.
He used the opportunity to debunk
insinuations that ASUU strike was meant to scuttle the 2019 general elections,
adding that “our strike has nothing to do with election. We are not planning to
abort any election.”
On claims by some government
officials that the ongoing strike had political colouration, the ASUU president
said the allegation was laughable and that the union was not perturbed by the
insinuations, saying that it was when government did not have solutions to its
demands that it came up with the claim of sponsorship.
“In 2013, ASUU was accused by the
then government; so we are not surprise or moved by the allegation,” he said.
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