ASUU begins one-week warning strike tomorrow

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will begin a one-week warning strike tomorrow over the Federal Government’s failure to implement the 2009 agreement and 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

ASUU President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, who disclosed this yesterday during a press conference said that after a series of meetings with the Minister of Education and the National Assembly on the need to respect the agreement and the MoU, it got no tangible results on key issues.

He said following nationwide consultation with our membership, “the National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU rose from its meeting yesterday, November 13, with a resolution to embark on a one-week warning strike starting from Wednesday, 16th November, 2016.”

According to Ogunyemi, “There shall be no teaching, no examination and no attendance of statutory meetings of any kind in any of our branches while the nationwide strike lasts.”

The union lamented the chronic underfunding of the education sector. It added that the low budgetary allocation to education sector from 11 per cent in 2015 to eight per cent in 2016 under the present administration calls for worry.
“A renegotiation of the agreement by the parties would have afforded both the government of Nigeria and ASUU to bring up unresolved issues in the areas of conditions of service, funding, university autonomy and academic freedom.”

“Our members are tired of government’s empty promises on setting up its negotiating team for the review of agreement, as consistently requested by ASUU since 2012,” Ogunyemi lamented.