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.