The Academic Staff Union of Universities has affirmed that its ongoing strike continues.
The union said it will not call it off until its demands to the government were met.
Recall that ASUU had on Sunday announced a nationwide strike, over failure of the Federal Government to implement the 2009 agreement between the two parties.
But the President of ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, while speaking with Punch during the week noted that members of the union would not return to the class if the demands it had itemised to the government last November were not implemented.
Ogunyemi said the strike would end “when the government is ready to do the right thing as we spelt out during our engagement with the government at the National Assembly in November last year.
“The least has been defined. In November last year, when we went to the National Assembly, the issues were itemised, seven, eight of them. The government was expected to have followed that pathway, to follow what I would call the action plan for resolving the matter.
“But for deviating from the action plan, the government exposed itself to the suspicion that it didn’t mean well. If it meant well, it must go back to that plan and from there, we address the issues.
“The government has defined the process for addressing the problem; it just needs to go back to it. It is because it didn’t act on the understanding, that is why we are back to where we are. This action was needless; it is like we were forced into it. Implementation must commence and the implementation we are talking about is not the issue of renegotiation.”
Speaking on some of the agreements, Ogunyemi noted that government had reneged on a 2013 agreement to revitalise universities with N1.3tn over a period of six years.
“The first year, the government was to release N200bn, which it did, but it took a long time for us to access it. But since that release in 2013, no single kobo has been released thereafter.
“For 2014, N220bn was not released. Again 2015 and 2016, nothing was released up to the third quarter of 2017. In all, we can estimate the outstanding amount to be about N825bn for revitalisation of our universities,” he said.
“In the last two years, what has been allocated to education in the budget is between six and seven per cent. Even in countries where they had wars like Rwanda and Sudan, they are still allocating well above 20 per cent to education. Our citizens are rushing to Ghana, most universities there are public universities,” he said.
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