LATEST UPDATE: ASUU denies suspending strike

POSTED ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 2ND, 2013

Ibadan zone of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has refuted insinuation that it would suspend the one month old strike embarked on by the union yesterday, stressing that the union has well laid down procedure before calling off any strike.

Zonal coordinator Ibadan zone of ASUU, Dr. Adesola Nasir, stated this on Wednesday while addressing newsmen at the Lagos State University (LASU).

He noted that such speculations were uncalled for and decried the attitude of government either in the present struggle or previous ones, adding that the strike would not be suspended until the government does what is right.

“ASUU Ibadan zone has taken note of certain reports in the media suggesting that the current strike may be suspended by Thursday August 1. We wish to urge that such speculations are uncalled for and the attitude of government either in the present struggle and the previous ones cannot support such.

“Our union has well grounded procedures for calling and suspending industrial action. The development so far has not necessitated the commencement of such process,” he said.

Nasir however called on all to prevail on government to deploy the wealth of the country to revamp the education sector as a pivot for reinventing the nation’s development, stressing that if government could deploy N3 trillion to rescue banks and several hundreds of billions of naira to bail out the textile and the aviation sector, it should certainly not develop cold feet when it comes to the public universities.

Speaking further he said it appears that the government is pushing for another round of negotiation of the agreement which ought to have been implemented years ago.

“It would interest you to know that the decision on the amount of funds needed to address both funding and payment of earned allowances was arrived at after meticulous data gathering across the universities nationwide,”

He noted that this year alone government has been selling crude at close to 150 per cent of budget price and has collected about N500b in 2013 in excess of projected revenue from tax alone.

“We are convinced that if our government cut their profligacy in many areas, they would have more than needed to adequately fund the education sector,” he added.