FG Claimed No Money For Varsities But Built Railway To Niger –ASUU

The Academic Staff Union of Universities has again blamed the Federal Government for the ongoing strike in public universities.

The union’s National President, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, stated in an interview with our correspondent that the government “went to sleep” for eight months after it completed negotiations with the union in May 2021.

According to him, ASUU waited for actions from the government to no avail.

Sunday PUNCH reports that ASUU had on Monday, March 14, 2022 announced an eight-week rollover of its four-week warning strike, which ended a day earlier.

Speaking with Sunday PUNCH, Osodeke explained that the union embarked on the eight-week rolling strike to give the Federal Government “more time.”

He said, “The initial idea was that the government would have met all the demands within the four weeks. But since the government said they could not meet up with our demands in four weeks, we said let us give them eight weeks. We just don’t want to declare an indefinite strike. Let us hope that in eight weeks, they meet up so that schools can return to normal and there will be an improvement in the system.

“All they have done is to make promises like they had done in the past. For our members, if you have made promises in the past that you did not fulfil, why should we believe you again? If the government was serious about these problems, within four weeks the problems would have been solved.

“We say release the white paper, release the revitalisation fund for universities and sign the agreement, these things should not have taken four weeks if they were serious.

“In 2021, ASUU did not go on strike and I’m sure you are aware of that. We completed negotiations in 2021, did we go on strike? Between May 2021 and February 2022, that is eight months, for them to go and look at what we discussed; did we go on strike during this period? No, but the government went to sleep.