Professor Abiodun Ogunyemi, ASUU’s national president, has told newsmen that the strike would go as scheduled while negotiations continue. Ogunyemi said this after a meeting between the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) and the federal government aimed at ending the almost week strike by university lecturers ended in a deadlock on Thursday.
Sources also claimed the chairman of the FGN/ASUU renegotiation team, Wale Babalakin, has disclosed that a purported plan by the federal government to release N220 billion annually into the university system was not an arrangement that emerged from the current renegotiation team or from that of the immediate past administration.
The report said the federal government agreed with ASUU to continue the negotiation in the coming days.Professor Abiodun Ogunyemitold journalists that the strike continued with no plan to call it off.
“We have just started the discussions; we have not really gone far. So, what we have done today is just to open up the issues. So, the strike still continues. We have not fixed a date for the next meeting but by tomorrow, we should know,” the ASUU president said.
He said the strike was going to be in motion until the government fully implemented all outstanding issues as contained in a previous memorandum and that all members of the union would withdraw services until those agreements had been met.
“This strike is total, comprehensive and indefinite. Our members shall withdraw their services until government fully implement all outstanding issues as contained in the MOA of 2017, and concludes the renegotiation of the 2009 agreements.
“We have been subjected to 20 years of continued re-colonization under alleged democracy in which all that the ruling circle have been regrouping among themselves in their various faction they called political parties,” he said.
It would seem that the pleas from parents and students to ASUU to end the strike have fallen on deaf ears as the strike runs through its third week.
