*Says FG, state govts need to stop acting like slave owners
By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) yesterday, charged the federal government to stop being insensitive and address the central demands of public university lecturers .
Addressing a press conference the Ibadan Zonal Coordinator of the Union Professor Oyebamiji Oyegoke said this became necessary for a better welfare and improved conditions of service.
Prof Oyegoke declared that there is the urgent need for ASUU to draw the attention of Nigerians “to the serial insensitivity of Federal Government of Nigeria to central issues connected with Nimi-Briggs Committee’s Renegotiated Agreement and care for the welfare of hard working Nigerian lecturers.”
He noted that the burning issues which led to the strike action of February – October, 2022 are being met with half-hearted, insincere and incoherent attention from Federal Government of Nigeria and its agents”
According to ASUU, Federal government has not mainstreamed billions of Earned Academic Allowances owed her members while it has also not signed let alone commence the implementation of the Nimi-Briggs Renegotiated 2009 draft agreements.
ASUU pointed out that the ” deliberate pauperisation of the intelligentsia has elevated the brain drain syndrome while newly appointed lecturers are resigning for greener pastures.
According to him, ” Despite the good intentions of ASUU members to make Nigerian universities globally competitive, the government has continued to unleash hardship on the lecturers as it is doing to other sectors of Nigerian state; a disposition of acting as a democratic government while pursuing IMF and World Bank anti-people polices abound and stares us in the face everyday”.
” There is a limit to which people should be pushed to the wall without resistance, ASUU, as a union of intellectuals, remained undaunted in our patriotic mission of rescuing Nigerian public universities from retrogression”, he said.
Prof Oyegoke added”Instead of doing the needful by signing and implementing the Nimi-Briggs Committee’s Renegotiated Agreement, best of what FGN can offer, is the whimsical awards of 35% and 25% to Professorial ranks and other levels by the National Wages, Salaries and Income Commission by the Buhari administration; a case of fighting the effects and not the cause of a problem”.
” The consequences will be dire in the event of perpetual improvisation of Nigerian University System. Withheld Salary Still unbowed by obnoxious no-work-no pay policy of Nigerian Government, withheld seven and half months’ salary and devaluation of Nigerian currency and the adverse economic conditions brought by subsidy removal from petroleum, our members have gone ahead to the cover lost grounds (of teaching, service and community service) occasioned by the strike action of February – October, 2022″.
Prof Oyegoke declared that ” In Federal and State universities examples abound of unpaid salaries to our members; an example is Osun State University that has not paid our members who participated in 2020 stike action, an action whose proceeds the university benefited and still benefitting from”.
The Ibadan Zonal Coordinator of the Union Professor Oyebamiji Oyegoke comprising the University of Ibadan, Ibadan; University of Ilorin, Ilorin; Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso; Kwara State University, Malete and Osun State University, Osogbo.
