UNILAG chapter divided over ASUU strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU yesterday warned vice chancellors not to adopt coercive and forceful strategies to get lecturers to resume work. ASUU Chairman at Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, AAUA, Ondo State, Dr. Busuyi Mekusi, gave the advice in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
“We are also pleading with the university administrators not to illegally employ impromptu lecturers.
“They should also not announce fake resumption dates or disrupt the meetings of ASUU members on campuses. “Such measures will not abate the already frosty relationship between the union, government and the university authorities”, he stressed.
He called for the convocation of ‘institutional summit’ as a way of starting the take-off of a rebirth process for public institutions in Nigeria to become more effective. He said social transformation would not succeed unless the Federal Government was strongly committed to entrenching strong and independent public agencies
. “We must not continue to deceive ourselves that governance, democracy and politics will reach enviable heights with the kind of public institutions in place.
“The truth of democracy as the expression of the people’s will and aspirations will come alive when Nigeria has public institutions that have not been politicised,” he said.
It will be recall that some state universities, including that of Ebonyi, had directed their lecturers and students to return to campus yesterday, to resume lectures and studies. Meanwhile, the University of Lagos, Akoka branch of the union has been divided over the continuation of the strike.
The development has led to the emergence of two factions within the institution. While one group wants the five-month old strike to be called off immediate, the other group, led by the branch chairman, Dr. Karo Ogbinaka insists on the Federal Government meeting a substantial part of the ongoing discussion.
Leader of the breakaway group, Dr. Adeyemi Daramola, a lecturer in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts yesterday accused the union of extremism on their stance on the strike. He said the strike ought to have been called off by now if the leadership has taken the interests of members as well as the public as paramount.
“Except for a few, a majority of us, including myself are tired of staying off classrooms. It is only that many are afraid to talk especially to journalists. So, this strike is unnecessarily too long. Precious times have been wasted on it. The action has already altered academic calendar with dare consequences on the system.
“So, it is not that ASUU’s course for embarking on the industrial action in the first instance is no longer tenable. The fact is that enough is enough. By next month, the strike will enter its sixth month. Is that not too much?
“Now, the Presidency has offered to settle with us and also ready to pay us our four months’ salaries once we resume to class, but I don’t know what the leadership wants again. Why will they be insisting that the salaries must be paid before resumption?
That demand is not good enough. Let resume first and see what will happen from the government side,” Daramola said. He further told National Mirror that the beauty and relevance of the strike was to call it off without any further delay and not to extend it to next year, as the leadership is projecting. But reacting, Ogbinaka described the position of Daramola’s faction as betrayal
He accused the faction of being financially induced to cause division and confusion within the union. He said UNILAG-ASUU not only remains as one but also has strong commitment to continue supporting the national leaders of the union in its effort to resolving the remaining grey areas in its discussion with the Federal Government.