ASUU Strike: Union Threatens To Boycott Future Meetings, Accuse FG Of Deceiving Nigerians

ASUU Strike: Union Threatens To Boycott Future Meetings, Accuse FG Of Deceiving Nigerians

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says it may not
honour further calls by the federal government for a meeting on the way
forward over the current strike by its members.  

The union’s National President, Biodun Ogunyemi, said this on the
sideline of a news conference on the update of the union’s struggle to
salvage the country’s public universities from deterioration on Sunday
in Lagos.  

According to Ogunyemi, to ensure that the agreements were
implemented, the union had held a series of consultative meetings with
the government and written series of letters with little or nothing to
the effect.  He noted that it was against this backdrop that union
resumed strike on November 4.

“Since the commencement of this strike, we have had six meetings with
agents of the federal government, with no clear commitment from
government to resolving the issues we presented.  

Government appears to have adopted ‘keep them talking’ strategy while
deceiving the public that progress was being made and that partial
agreements had been reached between union and government.  

We want to say that government has continually and falsely raised the
hopes of the Nigerian public on the state of duscussion with our union
and we may not be interested in holding further dialogue with them until
we see signs of commitment and sincerity in addressing the issues
before them.  

Our expectation from a very responsive and sincere position is that
by now, all outstanding issues would have been resolved to the
satisfaction of both parties.  Unfortunately, government is yet to show
commitment and sincerity in addressing these problems,” he said. .

According to the don, on the renegotiation of Federal Government/ASUU
agreement, there are still unresolved issues about the leadership of
the government team. . “We have strong reasons to believe that the
continuation of Dr Wale Babalakin as the head of the renegotiation with
ASUU will not yield good fruit,” he said.  

Ogunyemi said his union had taken up its current project as a
lifetime, adding that this was why dating back to the 1980s, the union
had remained consistent on what was of concern to it.  

“If we miss education, we miss development as we will end up being
enslaved the second time. What is happening in this country now is that
people are privatising everything, including education and before we
know it, what happened to our primary and secondary education will
happen.  

And these are some of the things we are supposed to be tracking and
engage in this society if we want to make the change that we need. Our
conviction is the reason behind the prolonged strike and our members
have the conviction that until we get education right, Nigeria will
never get it right. Insurgency will increase, banditry, poverty,
kidnapping, misery and other societal ills will continue.

Let me also state clearly too that our strike has nothing to do with
politics or election, as is being speculated in some sectors of the
society. We have never thought of aborting any election. We do not want
to create problem for this country but let the government do the right
thing,” he said.