Adelaja Odukoya, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) Lagos zone’s coordinator has stated that enough will not be enough until President Muhammadu Buhari does the needful and act presidentially by signing the renegotiated agreement among others.
Odukoya disclosed this on Tuesday, July 12, via his Twitter handle while responding to President Buhari’s statement ‘enough is enough’, urging striking university lecturers to call off their strike.
“Sadly Mr. President, enough will not be enough until you do the needful and act presidentially by signing the renegotiated agreement before your excellence authorise the end ruinous, evil and exploitative Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), and the adoption of University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS),” Odukoya said
He also asked Buhari to pay outstanding allowances, stop the proliferation of universities, and ensure the proper funding of public universities.
The ASUU zonal leader pointed out that the reason enough cannot be enough as far as the union’s strike is concerned is because President Buhari has failed to act in his capacity as the president to reposition the decaying and dying public university education in Nigeria.
Odukoya stated that Nigerian lecturers remain some of the poorest paid scholars not only in Africa, but the world.
“Our universities are unattractive to students and scholars from the globe; universities in the country are made constituency projects and mushroomed for political exigencies; Nigeria universities, no thanks to IPPIS are run as government parastatals, Nigeria universities are seen as profit-centres where government functionaries can obtain money to fund its executive gastrominal greed,” he noted.
Read also: Buhari charges ASUU members to resume work
Besides, the president allowed agents of the government to intimidate and oppress the lecturers for demanding what is supposed to be their right.
“This struggle too shall continue despite the state tyrannical disposition which has since manifested in the use of starvation as an instrument of oppression and subjugation against our members by the refusal to pay our salaries in the last five months,” he stated.
Odukoya, however, regretted the pains the strike has caused many Nigerian students, and families, but explained that the industrial action was induced by the federal government’s nonchalant attitude and indifference to the demands of ASUU, hence, failing to nip it in the bud.
“It is with painful and heartfelt amusement that we received your comical statement and laughable call yesterday that “enough is enough” on the almost five month old strike action of our union; ASUU occasioned and forced on us by the crass insensitivity, nonchalant disposition, ineptitude and crass indifference to the face of public university education in the country under your leadership.
“That all other unions in the nation’s public university system as well as unions in other tertiary educational levels in the country are also on strike for similar reasons belied and exposed the ridiculous disposition and propaganda to paint our union black in the face of the Nigerian public who has seen through the shenanigan, deliberate systematic and orchestrated agenda of the present government.
“This is not only to undermine but to comprehensively destroy public university education in unpatriotic obedience to the slavish and destructive command of the neoliberal high command to which the soul of this administration and its forbears seems to be irrevocably sold.
“The fact that the president unfortunately and sadly taken and embraced an attitude of mute indifference and unedifying quietude in the face of calamitous consequences a neglected education sector could foist on generations of Nigeria, including those yet unborn is a clear signpost of leadership failure,” he said.
He called on the federal government to be prepared to pay the needed sacrifices rather than global junketing, family egoistic ceremonies and partisan political activities.
“Mr. President sir, for ASUU, this strike action should not have lasted beyond the first week after it was declared, because the issues at stake were neither new nor do they require rocket science to resolve given that they had been MoUs and MoAs as well as a duly renegotiated ASUU-FG agreement completed way back in May 13, 2020 before your government which you and your administration neglected and refused to implement and signed,” he noted.
