Unending joy explodes among Nigerian students as they receive ASUU happiest news of all time
The Next Level administration of the APC-led government of President Muhammadu Buhari may already be yielding some positive results as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said strike isn’t on its agenda, following the smooth signing of the 2019 Memorandum of Action (MoA) agreed upon by the union and the Federal Government.
Nigerian students are said to be rejoicing over the good news, but ASUU added a clause: “if the Federal Government abide by the agreement”
He was reacting to a statement circulating on the social media regarding ASUU’s plan to embark on another strike. Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU President, gave the assurance in an interview on Thursday in Abuja, PM News reported.
ASUU and Government reached an agreement on Feb. 7 and the union suspended its three months strike on Feb. 8, after resolving eight areas of disagreement.
Ogunyemi, however, said that if government failed to fulfill its part of the agreement as reflected in the 2019 MoA, ASUU would resume its suspended strike as the union deemed fit.
Students and workers carry placards as they sit on the Lagos-Ikorodu highway to protest against the suspension of academic activities following a nation-wide strike embarked by lecturers in state-owned universities, on August 13, 2013 in Lagos. Students in collaboration with workers began mass protest to ask for quick resolution of conflicts that led to the on-going strike by lecturers in public Universities. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had, on July 2, declared an indefinite strike over unresolved issues after the government allegedly breached a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) they both signed in January 2011.
According to him, as far as our members are concerned, we are activating our Memorandum of Action by engaging the Federal Government to keep to their promises.
“Some of the agreements are already coming up, but some are still pending with respect to our Memorandum of Action and we will continue to do that and there is no continuation of any strike action for now.
“We are concerned about the plight of our students and we have gone back to intensify efforts to cover lost grounds.
“Our members have sacrificed their annual leave and those who are supposed to go on sabbatical, many of them have put on hold their sabbatical leave.
“This is to show our students and their parents and indeed all Nigerians that we are not out to destroy the system.
“Once we make demand from government and government responds positively, we will not go any extra mile to put down the system, our interest is to build the system and we have always done that,” he said.
He called on Nigerians to ignore the rumour of ASUU embarking on another industrial action.
“Someone or some people have created a twitter handle that they use to misinform Nigerians and we have responded to say we have nothing to do with that twitter handle, that anything on that twitter handle should be disregarded.
“We do not have an official twitter handle, we have just protested to twitter now, that the handle should be blocked because the twitter handle does not belong to us and they have been using it to make statements in the name of ASUU.
“We do not have anything to do with that handle and we have every reason to suspect that the person or those who created that twitter handle are fraudsters.
“Nigerians should be wary of them and they should not take seriously any information coming from that twitter handle because we do have not one and we have not directed any anybody to release information on our behalf, ‘’he said.
