Hold FG responsible for any peace breach in public varsities — ASUU
By Barth Ndubuwah, Port Harcourt
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has sounded it loud and clear that the Federal Government should be held responsible for any further disruption of academic activities in the public universities in the country.
The Port Harcourt Zonal Coordinator of ASUU,Comrd Stanley Ogoun stated this Friday during a media parley in Port Harcourt.
According to him, the Federal, State, Local governments and their allies have made several deliberate attempts to emasculate public universities to have a firm grip of the educational space in the country for their selfish interests.
“Recall also that Mr President promised that there will be no more strikes in the university system, but has failed to back up his pronouncement with conscious steps and efforts towards achieving that.”
“A clear evidence is the poor budgetary allocation to education in the 2024 budget, for which a similar trend is cascaded down the state levels.
“For instance, a government that pronounced N15 trillion as contract sum for a project that was not competitively bid for, is claiming not to have funds amounting to less than 7 percent of the N15 trillion to commit to addressing the decay in all public universities. What a tragedy,” ComradeStanley Ogoun said.
This, he alleged, has made ASUU members’ salaries not to be reviewed since 2009.
The Zonal Coordinator outlined demands of ASUU to include, increase in budgetary allocations to education, that will guarantee revitalisation of the public universities, as captured in the 2023 budget.
Others are paying of outstanding Earned Academic Allowance (EAA), amendment of the National Universities Commission (NUC) Act to stop further proliferation of public universities without adequate funding for existing ones, as well as release of three and half months owed their members,in line with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention.
ASUU was blunt in its allegation that the government wants to exterminate public universities seen as an obstacle to their complete economic conquest of the nation’s educational space.
ASUU equally took a swipe on the Chief of Staff to President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Femi Gbajabiamila, accusing him of depriving the leadership of the Union from accessing the President for no reason.
It therefore urged Nigerians to rise up and save the public universities, which it said is a collective responsibility.
