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JOE EFFIONG, UYO
The Academic Staff Union of Universities [ASUU], University of Uyo Branch, has accused the federal government of insensitivity and insincerity in the implementation of an agreement it signed with the Union in 2020 in order to destroy public universities to pave the way for private ones to thrive.
The Chairman of ASUU-UUB, Dr. Happiness Uduk, at a press conference held on Wednesday at the university campus to sensitize their members and other unions within the institution on why the union may go back on strike, in Uyo, explained that all entreaties by the union to federal government representatives on the need to honour the agreement, seems to fall on deaf ears, thereby paving way for another avoidable strike by the union.
According to Dr Aduk, the attitude of the government has further exposed the educational sector in the country to a grave danger, and a deliberate act to destroy the nation’s public institutions so as to create room for private ones owned by policymakers in the country.
“And it no longer require any dizzying analysis and discernment to understand Nigeria’s ruling class, for some time now, has been on the mission to completely destroy the nation’s public institutions in order to create the market for the private ones most of which are naturally owned by the same policy executors of the nation’s education policies.
“It is against this background that we have decided to call you, as witnesses, once again to the fact that the Federal government under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, has now sufficiently pushed the Union, once more, to the precipice of a nation-wide total and indefinite strike through its failure to honour the Memorandum of Association reached with Union in December 2020, upon which the Union suspended conditionally its nine-month strike of March to December 2020.
“We have waited most patiently for the government for over one year and yet there is no concrete sign that the federal government intends to do anything to ward off the ugly situation of yet another avoidable strike.
“Let me use this opportunity to request those parents, guardians and other Nigerians who would normally appeal to ASUU to suspend its strike in the interest of our children to now appeal to the government to forestall our going on strike in the interest of our children by implementing its terms of the settlement with us in December 2020. But if nothing concrete happens on the side of the government, we want Nigerians to know now whom to hold responsible if the Union, in its helplessness, decides to resume its conditionally suspended strike of 2020”, she said .
