ASUU Threatens To Scuttle Academic Session Over Salaries Seizure
Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) Ago-Iwoye, has called on the federal government pay their peers in federal universities their withheld salaries.
The body made the call during a peaceful demonstration on the streets of Ago Iwoye, Ogun State.
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The protesters, under the leadership of Dr. Joel Okewale, marched from the mini-campus of the institution in Ago-Iwoye community to the entrance gate.
They were worried over government oppressive position for seeing industrial action as evil and implementing ‘no-work-no-pay’ policy on the academic body.
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Speaking, the ASUU branch chairman, Dr. Joel Okewale, alleged that government’s decision to withhold lecturers’ salary because of strike is unlawful.
“We would not be forced to take the ‘no-pay-no-work’ decision and still be expected to complete the 2020/21 session, which government opted not to pay for.
“We would not add to the punishment being handed down to the Nigerian children by government’s refusal to adequately educate them in order to be fully prepared for the challenges of nation building.
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“Our union finds it most uncharitable and an utter betrayal of the Nigerian nation, going by the taxpayers’ money spent on the education of this crop of politicians and the entire ruling class that they represent.
“We commiserate with the Labour Minister, Chris Ngige, who turned from a mediator to a prosecutor just to be the servile face of the ruling elite in their efforts to keep the Nigerian masses uneducated or poorly educated and perpetually enslaved in their own country.
“We also equally commiserate with his collaborators in and outside government for their different roles in this struggle. Posterity would fish all of them out for their excrescences in no distant future.
“Nonetheless, our union, ASUU, remains committed to the ongoing struggle against the casualization of academic appointments. We would not relent until the poor budgetary expenditure to education is reversed and our universities are put on the pedestal for global reckoning.
“We are also committed to the struggle to liberate our country from the grip of neo-liberal organizations and their opportunistic collaborators in the country.
“We also use the opportunity to call on federal and state governments to review their present poor funding of education and invest in our children for the sake of our country,” Okewale said.