The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) on Monday called on members and civil society groups in Lagos state to come out en-masse on Tuesday morning to begin the two-day protest in solidarity with striking lecturers.
Mrs Funmi Sessi, state chairman of NLC gave the directive at a stakeholders’ meeting at the union’s secretariat in Yaba, Lagos states saying that the exercise will hold on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of the nationwide action.
The protest is coming on the heel appeal by the Federal Government that the NLC shelve the planned nationwide protest of striking members of the Acade.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been at loggerheads with the Federal Government since Feb. 14 over failure to honour some past agreements, among others.
The disagreement has kept students of most public universities at home for the past five months.
Some other unions in the university system are also on strike due to disagreements with the Federal Government for different reasons.
Sessi directed all sectors including the health, electricity and aviation to shutdown operations and join the solidarity protest in support of the striking workers.
“We will be converging as early as 6:30 a.m. at Ikeja and take off by 7.00 a.m. to deliver a letter to Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu in Alausa.
“The protest is to support ASUU in the ongoing strike, so we call on all affiliate members to come out en masse,’’ she said.
Sessi called on Lagos state-owned tertiary institutions to also join in the protests.
“We are going to mobilise our members and be fully on the street,” she said.
Sessi said that electricity workers would be part of the protest, but advised nurses to attend to only emergency cases.
She assured that the union had adopted measures to ensure that the protest was not hijacked.
Sessi said law enforcement agencies should not brutalise its members.
ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Lagos State, Dr Adelaja Odukoya, said the protest was for liberation of the nation’s tertiary education.
He said lecturers were being paid slave salaries and government was not concerned about quality of education in the country.
Odukoya said the union does not like strike but wanted to press home demand to make the nation’s universities competitive with global standard.
“ The struggle is in the interest of our children.
“Enough is enough, government must fund education system. If Nigeria must develop, attention must be paid to our university education,” he said.
He said the strike had lingered for five months and the lecturers would not back down if government does not meet the demands of ASUU.