Dele Ashiru solicits stakeholders’ collaborations to revive universities

Dele Ashiru, the chairman of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called for a revitalisation of public universities in Nigeria.

Ashiru made the call in Lagos at a meeting where he delivered a paper titled “Putting an end to the perennial ASUU strike: The role of the academia, government, parents, and students”.

The university don in his speech counseled the federal government to implement the agreements it signed in 2009 with the ASUU.

Ashiru called on the stakeholders for support, insisting that ASUU alone would not get the government into doing what is needed to improve the tertiary education sector in the country.

“Nigerian universities rather than being citadels of learning became citadels of violence, corruption, neglect, and mal-administration and the system brew various crimes.

“It was the ASUU agitation as a trade union of intellectuals that led to the 2009 ASUU/FGN agreement and 2012 ASUU ‘Needs Assessment of Nigeria Universities’.

Read also: Students protest in Edo, demand end to ASUU strike

“Parents must support ASUU in the agitation for restructuring the educational system,” he stated.

Recall that the lecturers in public universities in Nigeria embarked on 30 day warning strike on February 14 to the federal government the opportunity to address the union’s demands.

However, the strike was rolled over on March 14 when the federal failed to attend to the requests of striking lecturers.

ASUU has been on industrial action for the past three months, as the lecturers and the federal government are yet to resolve the impasse.

The striking lecturers are demanding that the federal government scrap the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) which they described as a conduit pipe to squander public funds.

In the place of the IPPIS, the union proscribed that the federal government should rather use a payment platform that accommodates the nature of service lecturers offer which is the Universities Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS).

Besides, ASUU is asking that the federal government should as a matter of urgency implement the renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement, among others.

Unfortunately, instead of reaching a consensus on how and when to end the strike the federal government has declared a no-work-no-pay stance which seems to infuriate the union the more.