The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Sunday insisted on the implementation of the renegotiated 2009 agreement signed between it and the Federal Government to call off its ongoing over five months strike.
The union’s position comes as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and all its affiliate members say they are fully mobilised for the two-day (Tuesday and Wednesday) national protest in solidarity with ASUU and other unions in the nation’s tertiary institutions.
While saying that the present administration has displayed capacity to abuse trust, ASUU lamented that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) and memorandum of action signed with the government were not honoured.
It also noted that its members were being owed nine years’ allowances by the Federal Government.
Read also: FG declares NLC’s proposed ASUU solidarity protest illegal
Ayo Akinwole, chairman of ASUU, University of Ibadan, said: “Our renegotiation ought to have ended by 2012 but here we are in 2022 yet the government is playing games with us.
We are asking for a renegotiation of existing agreements that will position our members as human beings working in a decent place. We are asking for revitalisation of public universities through appropriate funding. We are saying we have a better home-grown alternative of University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS), we are saying check the proliferation of universities that you cannot fund and we are saying Nigerians deserve to be ranked among the top 100 in the world if our leaders invest in education.”
“We should be developing our own solutions not depending on others. Sadly, we have an uncoordinated presidency and cabinet working at cross purposes. This strike is not about ASUU, it is about the future of the Nigerian children.”
Akinwole posited that Nigerians should not see the strike as an ASUU thing but a fight all Nigerians must own to have a future of quality education for their children.
“Nigeria is in the hands of allegedly incompetent people due to collective negligence of Nigerians; until we rise above sentiments to get responsible and responsive people who will be accountable to Nigerians into public offices, the cycle of strikes will not end in Nigeria”.
He stated that the Federal Government led by President Muhammadu Buhari was largely uncoordinated where the president gives order and his media aide denied he gave such order.
Akinwole reminded Nigerians that although the Federal Government has stopped the salaries of their members for five months, the lecturers are resolved to fight to victory over the parasitic ruling class.
He called on Nigerians to join the struggle to get the government to revitalise and fund public universities to give Nigerian children hope of governing their country, adding that unless that is done, the children of the ruling class trained in foreign universities will return to take over from their wicked parents and continue to enslave Nigerians.
He said the union would actively participate in the two-day protest being organised by the NLC, adding that it was sad that the President Buhari’s government which prides itself as fighting corruption would be frustrating the use of home-grown solution for IPPIS that has been discredited by the audit report of 2019.
The ASUU leader stated that members of the union were also affected by the strike not only in terms of finances but their education as many of them are doing their doctoral degrees in public universities. “My own children are at home with me too,” he added.
“We got here by collective negligence of electing incompetent people into public offices. The fight for quality education for the children of the masses has become a class war among the economic elite, the working class and the ruling class and until we rise up and demand accountability from those in office to do what is in the best interest of the majority, the cycle of strikes and underdevelopment will not stop. Nigerians continue to elect people who don’t care about them. We worship those who have money more than those with right virtues and have the interest of society at heart,” the added.
