Academic activities may be disturbed in the nation’s high institutions as members of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) staged protest across the country on Tuesday, accusing the Federal Government of neglect.
They also rejected the Federal Government’s loan scheme for university lecturers and other workers in tertiary institutions, describing it as trap.
ASUU is demanding the signing of 2009 lingering renegotiated agreement, revitalisation funds, unpaid salaries and unremitted deductions.
Branch chairman, Professor Idou Keinde, who addressed members of the union in the state, accused the government of deliberate neglect, saying that its refusal to address ASUU’s grievances was pushing the union towards another strike.
In Bauchi, ASUU members at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) marched from the PTDF Centre to the university gate in protest.
Branch chairperson, Dr Angulu Haruna, said lecturers were “tired of government deception,” stressing that their withheld three and a half months’ salaries and four years of promotion arrears must be paid.
He rejected attempts to tie the union to the Tertiary Institutions Students Support Fund (TISSF) loan scheme, describing it as a ploy to “consign academics into debt” while ignoring the real issue of sustainable university funding.
“We demand improved pay, not poison disguised as loans,” he declared.
In Niger State, ASUU members of the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUT Minna), joined the demonstrations.
Branch chairman, Professor Lukman Oyewobi, said the protest was to alert Nigerians to government’s “deliberate negligence.”
He lamented that Nigerian professors are among the lowest paid in Africa, with some earning less than $350 monthly.
According to him, government’s delay tactics and breaches of international labour standards were destabilising campuses and undermining the future of higher education.
“We cannot continue with a system that mocks knowledge and punishes scholarship,” he said.
In Akure, the Federal University of Technology (FUTA) ASUU branch accused government of betraying trust.
Branch chairman, Professor Pius Mogaji, said the report of the Yayale Ahmed-led renegotiation panel, submitted since February, had been ignored for over five months.
He warned that if nothing concrete comes out of the scheduled August 28 meeting with government, ASUU would have no option, but to go on strike.
“Trust has been shattered. Restore it now or brace for the inevitable,” he told newsmen.
Mogaji also criticised the approval of nine new private universities despite an earlier moratorium on new institutions, calling it “reckless proliferation” that reduces education to political souvenirs.
He added that retired lecturers, some of whom earn as little as N150,000 monthly after decades of service, were being treated with shameful neglect.
In Oyo State, ASUU members at the University of Ibadan (UI) and Emmanuel Alayande University of Education (EAUE), held rallies to sensitise the public.
The University of Ibadan chapter chairman, Dr Adefemi Afolabi, lamented poor welfare and brain drain in the system, urging Nigerians to pressurise government to sign the renegotiated agreement by August 28.
At the University of Lagos, ASUU members marched from the main gate to the Senate building, brandishing placards that read: “Lecturers too want earthly rewards for teaching” and “Neglect of university education is a pact with underdevelopment.”
