As contained in a release by its zonal coordinator, Professor Oyebamiji Oyegoke, the union said what it was pushing for was for repositioning of universities for greater efficiency in national development and technological advancement.
He added that what the union sought was massive and sustained funding for our universities; a reversal of apparent decay in the university system, and enhanced and competitive remuneration for overworked academic staff in Nigerian universities.
He asked Nigerians to join ASUU to ask the Federal Government of Nigeria to toe the path of honour by respecting the agreement it freely entered with our union.
He added that unless Nigerians join ASUU to struggle and deliver public-funded universities, children of the common man may find access to qualitative education difficult.
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Oyegoke added that the Ibadan zone joined the leadership of the union to reject what it called disrespectful and demeaning award of money and jettisoning collective bargaining in arriving at what the federal government presented to the union.
Oyegoke said: “The main issue, involved in the current ASUU travails is about living up to responsibility or the abdication of it. If the government is not a continuum, ASUU as a body of intellectuals would not have been insisting on re-negotiating and implementing an agreement reached and signed with it in 2009 by the Federal Government of Nigeria.
“An agreement reached with FGN whose re-negotiation ought to have commenced in 2012, did not take off until 2017 under Mr Wale Babalakin (SAN) who was challenged majorly by ASUU for recommending that students in Nigerian Universities should pay up to a million Naira per session as tuition fee.
“The recommendations of Munzali Jubril Committee’s of 2020 were equally rejected by FGN. This Committee was replaced lately by Nimi Briggs’s Committee in March 2022. For crying out loud, the federal government has its mind made up ab initio. All ASUU’s patriotic yearnings to repositioning public universities, whether Federal or state to serve as agents of developmental transformation do not cut any ice with the federal government.
“A fundamental question to ask is: were Emeritus Professors Munzali Jibril and Nimi Brigg’s committees not set up by FGN?
“Let us take the first committee. Prof. Munzali’s Committee was inaugurated in December 2020 by Mallam Adamu Adamu on behalf of FGN who clearly declared during the Committee’s inauguration this statement, ‘Government is determined to, within available resources, provide the requisite environment, infrastructure as well as improve the conditions of service for all categories of staff in Nigerian universities.’
“This statement is an admission of some of the objectives which ASUU Re-negotiated Agreement set out to achieve. Such referencing is clearly an affirmation of ASUU’s principled position in reforming the Nigerian University system. It is important to note that a committee that was composed of eminent Pro-chancellors of State and Federal Universities; advisers like Executive Secretaries of NUC, TETfund and Chairman, Committee of Vice-Chancellor of Nigerian Universities; and observers, coming from representatives of Federal Ministries like Labour and Productivity, Finance and Budget Planing, Justice, Salaries, Income and Wages, etc; any government which discountenances the findings of such robust assemblage will at best be described as deceptive and unpatriotic.
“To set up another committee, within a space of a little above two years headed by another Emeritus Professor, Nimi Briggs, is not only duplicitous but a portrayal of lack of seriousness which typifies all levels of governance in Nigeria. That, the recommendations of Nimi Briggs’s Committee were set aside could only mean a deterministic mind of abuse of power and lack of concern for the future of University System in Nigeria.
“If all that ASUU got for stagnating on the same salary for more than thirteen years was mere 35% (N60,000) salary increase for its Professors and another 23.5% (N30,000) for Senior Lecturers and below, the question arises of what the equivalent workers in public service earn as compared to the miserly offer by the Government.”