Pay Withheld Salaries Or Risk Scuttled Academic Session, ASUU Warns FG
Yesterday, Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) Ago-Iwoye Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) members marched to the streets to demand that the federal government pay their counterparts in federal universities’ withholding salaries.
The lecturers protested what they called the federal government’s “brazen show of scorn for education and the intelligentsia” as they marched from the institution’s mini-campus in Ago-Iwoye town to the entry gate under the leadership of the branch chairman, Dr. Joel Okewale.
They expressed concern that by criminalizing strike activity and enforcing its “no-work-no-pay” policy against ASUU, the government had escalated its anti-people and oppressive stance.
The government’s self-determined “no-work, no-pay” policy and the criminalization of strike action, according to Okewale, who spoke at the gathering, are alien to the academic system.
He claimed that the union had interpreted it as part of the punishment the federal government had put on ASUU members for daring to demand that it properly fund education and fulfill its promise to both ASUU and the youth of Nigeria.
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He further stated that students would not be compelled to choose the “no-pay, no-work” option and would still be required to finish the 2020–21 academic year, which the government chose not to fund.
He recalled that ASUU suspended its 8-month old strike forced on her by the refusal of government to honour the spirit and letters of the 2009 Agreement and the memoranda thereto, stressing that it is also no longer in contention that government had failed to resolve the matter of renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability solution (UTAS), to replace the discredited and irredeemably deficient Integrated Payroll and Personnel information System (IPPIS), release of White Papers on the Visitation to Federal Universities, release of Revitalization Funds, and stoppage of Proliferation of State Universities among others.
He said, “we would not be forced to take the ‘no-pay-no-work’ decision and still be expected to complete the 2020/21 session, which government opted not to pay for.
“We would not add to the punishment being handed down to the Nigerian children by government’s refusal to adequately educate them in order to be fully prepared for the challenges of nation building”.
“Our union finds it most uncharitable and an utter betrayal of the Nigerian nation, going by the taxpayers’ money spent on the education of this crop of politicians and the entire ruling class that they represent”.
“We commiserate with the Labour Minister, Chris Ngige, who turned from a mediator to a prosecutor just to be the servile face of the ruling elite in their efforts to keep the Nigerian masses uneducated or poorly educated and perpetually enslaved in their own country”.
“We also equally commiserate with his collaborators in and outside government for their different roles in this struggle.
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“Posterity would fish all of them out for their excrescences in no distant future. Nonetheless, our union, ASUU, remains committed to the ongoing struggle against the casualization of academic appointments.
“We would not relent until the poor budgetary expenditure to education is reversed and our universities are put on the pedestal for global reckoning”.
“We are also committed to the struggle to liberate our country from the grip of neo-liberal organizations and their opportunistic collaborators in the country.
“We also use the opportunity to call on federal and state governments to review their present poor funding of education and invest in our children for the sake of our country,” Okewale said.
