ASUU Berates FG Over 'No-Work-No-Pay' Rule

Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU)

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yesterday, berated the Federal Government over 'no-work-no-pay' rule, and said that its intellectual committee had resolved not to be caged by such threat.

The Convener of the ASUU'S' committee on Human Rights, Dr Sola Olorunyomi, said in Ibadan that ASUU was only interested in the full implementation of the agreement which could make lecturers return to the classrooms.

He vowed that the union would deliver Nigeria's education system from the enslavement of the political class, and added that the academic staff have only withdrawn the teaching component of their calling and said that they were fully involved in research and community services.

"After about 300 years of slave trade, the Federal Government's attempt to make this era of a second or third slavery will not be allowed. Our students have said to us "do not come back without achieving results from your strike.

"The federal government is not committed to paying bursaries again for students. The necessary equipment are not in our laboratories, there is no light, no functional internet facilities, we cannot even attract foreign scholars into our universities due to the lamentable conditions we work in.

"My salary cannot even take me home. We can't be fooled again. We must fight for the revitalisation of this education industry." he added.

Olorunyomi, who is a lecturer at the Institute of African studies and member, University of Ibadan strike Information sub-committee, lamented that the government's body language shows insincerity.

The ASUU leader noted that the union had vowed to forge ahead with the strike until the agreements are fully implemented and added that the enslavement of education must be stopped. This was just he lamented that the underfunding of research had made conduct of cutting edge researches a pipe dream in Nigeria.

He said that the leadership of ASUU met with representatives of Federal Government and were shocked when the Government's side feigned ignorance of the strike and any agreement until they were showed their signature in the document.

"We are resolute this time. We are prepared to go hungry. You can't believe that the people we met first feign ignorance of the agreement not until our team brought out the memorandum of agreement and some of them saw their signatures.

"It was a drama of sort but you can only have that in Nigeria. We are doing more than we are earning. Cutting edge researches are dwindling because we have no funding. We have people who have developed alternative to power in UI but they do not have support to go beyond that level," he said.

According to him, the University of Ibadan develops sweet corn, Pando yam and several others. The political elites are hypocrites and are more interested in rent economy."

Olorunyomi said that government and the political class have conspired to under-develop, under- fund the education sector by shirking from her funding responsibilities to education.