The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says there is no going back on its one-week warning strike scheduled to begin today.
Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, the union’s National President, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on telephone on Tuesday in Lagos that the strike would be total.
NAN reports that the union leadership, after its emergency executive committee meeting, declared the warning strike at a news conference on Monday in Abuja.
Ogunyemi said chronic under-funding of the sector through low budgetary allocation, which went from 11 per cent in 2015 to eight per cent in 2016, did not go down well with the union.
He pointed out the failure of government to implement the 2009 agreement and the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as some of the reasons for embarking on the warning strike.
The president said that its members were tired of what they described as “government’s empty promises’’ in setting up its negotiation team for the review of agreement as consistently requested by ASUU since 2012.
“There shall be no teaching, no examination and no attendance of statutory meetings of any kind in any of our branches while the strike lasts.’’
According to him, the union will put machinery in place to ensure that there is total compliance during the strike.
He explained that the essence of the warning strike was to draw attention of concern stakeholders and the general public to the challenges that the unions, universities and other stakeholders in the sector were facing.
