The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has accused the federal government of using a form of delay tactics in negotiating with its representatives in the effort to resolve the ongoing strike action embarked upon by the union.
It has therefore said it may not honour further calls by Federal Government for a meeting on the way forward over the strike by its members.
Speaking for the first time since representatives of the union walked out on a meeting with government’s negotiating team, National President, of ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, said: “Government appears to have adopted ‘keep them talking’ strategy while deceiving the public that progress was being made and that partial agreements had been reached between union and government.”
Ogunyemi spoke on Sunday in Lagos on the sideline of a news conference on the update of the union’s agitation to redeem the country’s public universities from deterioration.
Recall that ASUU, had on Nov. 4, embarked on an indefinite strike to press home its demand for improved funding of the public universities in Nigeria, the non implementation of agreements entered into with the Federal Government in 2009 and 2017, among other issues.
The ASUU leader recalled that to ensure implementation of the agreements, the union had held series of consultative meetings with the government and written series of letters with little or nothing to the effect, leading to the ongoing strike.
With regards to efforts to end the current strike, he said: “Since the commencement of this strike, we have had six meetings with agents of the Federal Government, with no clear commitment from government to resolving the issues we presented.
“We want to say that government has continually and falsely raised the hopes of the Nigerian public on the state of discussion with our union and we may not be interested in holding further dialogue with them until we see signs of commitment and sincerity in addressing the issues before them.
“Our expectation from a very responsive and sincere position is that by now, all outstanding issues would have been resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.
“Unfortunately, government is yet to show commitment and sincerity in addressing these problems,” he said.
He reiterated ASUU ’s position on the headship of government’s renegotiating team. “We have strong reasons to believe that the continuation of Dr Wale Babalakin as the head of the renegotiation with ASUU will not yield good fruit,” he said.
He also insisted that the union would not back down on its efforts to see improvement in the public universities. “If we miss education, we miss development as we will end up being enslaved the second time.
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“What is happening in this country now is that people are privatising everything, including education and before we know it, what happened to our primary and secondary education will happen.
“And these are some of the things we are supposed to be tracking and engaged in this society, if we want to make the change that we need.
“Our conviction is the reason behind the prolonged strike and our members have the conviction that until we get education right, Nigeria will never get it right.
“Insurgency will increase, banditry, poverty, misery and other societal ills will kidnapping continue.
“Let me also state clearly too that our strike has nothing to do with politics or election, as is being speculated in some sectors of the society.
“We have never thought of aborting any election. We do not want to create problem for this country but let government do the right thing,” he said.
