ASUU strike: Our leaders are clueless – Union carpets FG over deadline, vows to continue action

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, today wholly castigated the supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike.
The union at a sensitization match Sunday morning, stated that Wike displayed ignorance by issuing sack threat to over 60, 000 lecturers in the country.
Recall that the Minister, last Wednesday on behalf of the Federal Government, ordered the striking lecturers to call off its action by December 4 or lose their jobs.
Reacting, ASUU Chairman, University of Ibadan, UI, Olusegun Ajiboye, said the Minister’s statement was an indicated that he had no faintest idea of the process involved in recruitment of staff into the university.
“The university system has a standing process of recruiting its teachers which often takes a whole session, at the least”, he said.
“It means that the federal government was designing a plan to keep students at home till the middle of next year after which recruitment may have been completed.”
Ajiboye, who led about 200 UI lecturers on the protest which kicked off at UI entrance gate and car park, accused the Federal Government of not having a clear vision for its policies.

The members at the rally wore T-shirts with inscriptions such as “Walk out the Beasts in our system”, “Work out and work to save public education”, “FG walk the path of honour”, and “Annulment of agreements, a comedy of errors.”
Addressing his colleagues, the leader said “It shows cluelessness in those leading us. The same police that has not been able to stop kidnapping, armed robbery, oil theft, or arrest corrupt politicians now becomes a tool of democratic oppression in the hands of our policy makers.
“They will all fail. Will the police come to the campuses with new hostels, laboratories, lecture rooms, Internet or what does Wike mean by they will provide enabling environment.
“It is important for him to know that apart from politicians, no Nigerian worker has an enabling working environment,” he posited.
Speaking further, Ajiboye denied reports that the Union made new demands in its letter to President Goodluck Jonathan.
On the deployment of police officers to university campuses, he described it as a waste of personnel, insisting that the lecturers would not call off the strike.
The Chairman maintained that only the implementation of the agreed resolutions could bring an end to the impasse and not deployment of security agents.
ASUU embarked on the ongoing action on July 1 over failure of the government to implement the agreement both parties reached in 2009.