The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has called on the federal government to respect the agreement both had which led to the suspension of the 8-month-old strike by paying the outstanding arrears owed lecturers and resolving all the issues that led to the last strike.
The ASUU Chairman of, the University of Port Harcourt, Dr. Darlington Uzoma made the call during a special congress and protest rally at the university campus on Monday; while academic activities were temporarily paralyzed.
After the special congress attended by the Port Harcourt zonal chairman of ASUU, Prof Stanley Ogoun, the lecturers protested round major sections of the institution against all forms of ill-treatment meted out to lecturers by the government.
They sang solidarity songs with placards, marched from the ASUU secretariat at the Delta Park of the university through the main entrance of the school, to the Senate building, the Agriculture building and returned to the union’s secretariat.
Some of the inscriptions on the placards read, ‘lecturers deserve their full wages’, ‘no to casualization of university lecturers’, ‘Federal Government stop maltreating lecturers’, and ‘no nation can properly develop without teachers’, among others.
Addressing newsmen, the ASUU Chairman, Uniport chapter, Darlington Uzoma said the protest was to express the union’s dissatisfaction over recent attempts by the federal government to reduce the university lecturers to daily paid casual workers.
He said there was nowhere in the world where university lecturers are treated like casual workers like what is being experienced in Nigeria
“After the strike was suspended following an order by the National Industrial Court, we have come back to resume our duties. And we are currently doing all the arrears of work that we should have done during the period of the strike.”
Uzoma argued that the no-work-no-pay adopted by the government was neither here nor there, saying, “During the strike, it was only teaching we were not doing.
“We were doing research, our members published during that period and we also engaged in community services. Already we are clearing the backlog of work. At the moment, we are combining two sessions.
“It is so clear now that the ruling class wants to decimate the public universities and of course as the eggheads of the nation, we won’t allow that to happen.
“If the government continues to say they will not pay us, it simply means we are going to abandon all the work that we were supposed to do during the strike.
“The implication is that some of the sections, for instance here in the university of Port Harcourt, we are dealing with academic activities associated with the 2020/2021 session and 2021/2022 session.
“We call on the federal government to pay us our salary arrears and also expedite action towards resolving all the issues that led to the last strike so that we prevent the likely chaos that may come up in our universities.”
On his part, the ASUU Chairman, Port Harcourt zone, Prof. Stanley Ogoun said what the government was doing with ASUU was being replicated in other sectors, but that in the latter they don’t have strong unions to fight.
“This fight is not only for ASUU. The students and their parents should be involved. If you think you are not affected, if the government succeeds in stifling and stopping ASUU, they will come for the students someday. So it is about fighting to save our public universities,” he added.
