The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Lagos chapter, has declared that it is prepared to embark on a total and indefinite strike should the management of the institution fail to address its demands.
Chairman of the union, Dr Adelaja Odukoya, made this known at a protest rally conducted on the campus of the institution by the union on Wednesday.
He said “strike will be our last resort. We are not interested in strike. That’s why we are doing this rally, this sensitisation... In the event of failure, however, we will be forced to go on a total, indefinite, comprehensive, strike that will ground the school.”
Hundreds of academic staff members marched from faculty to faculty, waving placards and posters that enumerated their demands.
Speaking on “Ph.D and promotion,” Dr Odukoya observed: “in this same university, we still have professors without Ph.D. Why has it become impossible to promote an assistant lecturer to Lecturer I without Ph.D?”
He lamented that the vice chancellor had reneged on agreements reached by the union and the management, though the committee had been headed by the current vice chancellor (before his appointment).
“In 2011, we engaged the university authorities on this… Interestingly, the incumbent vice chancellor was the chairman of that committee. We agreed that notional promotion would be a thing of the past in this university. We agreed that people that have been so promoted since 2009 would be paid their arrears. Interestingly now, it is not only that this thing is not implemented, but recently promoted associate professors and professors in this university were made to sign that they cannot even claim their rights in terms of this notional promotion,” Dr Odukoya stated.
In a related development, one year after, the leadership of ASUU has vowed to continue to pursue the cause of justice for the death of Professor Festus Iyayi in an avoidable road accident in Kogi State.
ASUU, President, Mr Nasir Fagge, insisted that government could not extricate itself from the circumstances that led to his unfortunate death.
Fagge, who was represented by Biodun Ogunyemi, spoke on Wednesday, at a commemorative conference in honour of the late don at the headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Abuja.
ASUU, particularly condemned the excesses of government officials on the use of highways and indiscriminate use of sirens to intimidate other road users.
He regretted that Nigeria is a country where traffic rules and regulations are flouted with impunity and jeopardising the lives of others in the process.
ASUU also noted that if the Federal Government had willingly implemented the 2009 Agreement it entered with the union, there would have been no need for that protracted strike that claimed the life of Iyayi.
The late Professor Iyayi was killed on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 in a road accident involving the convoy of the governor of Kogi State, Idris Wada, while on his way to Kano to attend a National Executive Council (NEC) meeting called to resolve the protracted industrial action embarked on by ASUU then.
Fagge, said the vacuum created by the exit of Iyayi in the union’s affair was immeasurable, especially his “people- oriented radical counsel, his leadership trait, his ruggedness and his sense of direction.”
He said: “we are today gathered in memory of Comrade Iyayi, it is expected that this occasion will afford us the platform to recall and reflect on the good times we had with him and take stock of what we have done and how best to keep his name in perpetuity and redress the senseless situation in which he was killed.
“We are presently in the court of law over what amounts to the murder of Professor Iyayi by an agent of the Kogi State Government. We hope to get justice for Comrade Iyayi and for ordinary Nigerians who have been victims of state-involved murder,” ASUU stated.
Meanwhile, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC),, Abdulwaheed Omar, said Iyayi’s untimely death called for sober reflection particularly the impunity with which those in government operate.
He said NLC and ASUU would brainstorm with other experts at the National Assembly to enact some legislations to check the unwarranted use of sirens that claim lives.
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