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By Gabriel Dike
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on Thursday appealed to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to begin the implementation of the 2025 FG/ASUU agreement to avert industrial unrest in the three state-owned universities.
ASUU Lagos Zone made the urgent appeal at a briefing at the Lagos State University of Science and Technology (LASUSTECH) to reveal the non-implementation of the 2025 FG/ASUU agreement by the Lagos State Government.
The Zonal Coordinator, ASUU, Lagos Zone, Prof. Adesola Nassir, said out of the seven branches in the zone, only the Lagos State Government has not implemented the agreement.
Prof. Nassir said the briefing is to address delayed implementation of the FG/ASUU 2025 agreement in the three universities owned by Lagos State Government, which are the Lagos State University (LASU), Lagos State University of Education (LASUED) and LASUSTECH, six months after the agreement was signed.
The zonal coordinator confirmed that the union has written to the state government through the vice chancellors of Lagos LASU,LASUED and LASUSTECH without a positive response.
His words: “We are drawing the attention of the Lagos State Government of the brewing unrest in the three universities. The state government is the one fuelling the unrest.
“The state government should be held responsible for the brewing unrest in LASU, LASUED and LASUSTECH. The national body has thrown its weight behind our members in the three universities for any decision they take have our backing.
“All state governments in the zone have started the implementation of the agreement. We don’t want LASU, LASUED and LASUSTECH to be shut because of the non-implementation of the agreement. We care for our students but we will not compromise our members welfare,” Nassir stated.
He advised Governor Sanwo-Olu not to allow ASUU to storm Lagos to protect against the non-implementation of the agreement, adding, we will mobilize our members from the seven branches and the civil society organizations. We don’t want any crisis in the state universities but if the current approach fails, we will resort to another level of agitation.”
According to him, during the renegotiation, stakeholders were carried along, which includes the Federal Government team comprised pro-chancellors of federal and state universities in addition to representatives of other government agencies.
He added: “By this arrangement, we believed that the implementation of the
agreement would be seamless such that the disruption in academic calendars, occasioned by union strikes over non implementation, would be avoided.
“To our utter disappointment, the Lagos State Government appears to be playing the ostrich on this matter. Six months of interaction with some representatives of the Lagos State Government have not produced any concrete results. By the attitude of the Lagos State authorities.”
He argued that the union is committed to the welfare of its members, “we have
decided to stand by our members in the state owned universities in their struggles for the implementation of the agreement.”
The coordinator added that ASUU would give full support to LASU, LASUED and LASUSTECH in whatever decision they chose to take to get the agreement implemented by the state government.
“We are thereby alerting the Lagos State Government of a brewing unrest in the state. Government, not ASUU, should be held responsible if all universities belonging to Lagos State are thrown into avoidable crises or totally shut down on account of poor response of the Government to the
concerns of our members.”
The union urged the Governor Sawo-Olu, who is also the Visitor to these universities, to crown his tenure with a crisis free Lagos State by resolving this matter and other crisis points in its universities.
