Gov’t Can Reopen Universities But We Won’t Teach Students — ASUU

The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, says federal and state governments are free to order the reopening of public universities if they wish.

Osodeke, however, said its members reserve the right to continue withholding their services until the federal government resolves the ongoing strike by university lecturers.

He stated this during an interview on Arise TV monitored by THE WHISTLER on Thursday.

Osodeke made the statement in reaction to recent reports that the Ekiti State University called on its students to return to school as it was commencing academic and administrative activities on Monday 29th August 2022.

“ASUU doesn’t run universities, the government has the right to say ‘we have reopened’ but our members have the right to say ‘that is good for you, but we are not teaching’. We are not, we are on strike. As it happened in Gombe, Yobe, and Kaduna State University. That is irrelevant,” he said.

Recently, parents of students in Federal Universities reached an agreement to contribute N10,000 monthly in an attempt to help satisfy some of ASUU’s demands and convince them to return to the classrooms, seeing as the FG appears not to be forthcoming.

But Osodeke said while he commends the effort by the parents to seek alternative ways to address the problem, the suggestion is not a sustainable alternative.

“I want to start by commending them for at least looking for other ways to raise money but for me, I think what this association should be doing is to tell the Government to perform its function. First, they should tell the President to honour his agreement; secondly, he should make education a priority; and finally, he should use the funds of the Nigerian people, not that of the President, to fund education as it is done in other countries.

“If you say parents should contribute N10,000 each, first is it sustainable? Second who is going to do the collection? Not the same government officials that we have there today, after what happened with IPPIS that one man is alleged to have taken N109 or N170 billion. Won’t something happen to the money after its contributed by these innocent people? The main point is that as citizens we should not give up, we should strive to ensure that the government we elected take our issues as priorities.

“Talking about alternative sources of funding, if you check the agreement, we signed with Nimi Briggs or even Munzali Jubril, all the alternatives are there. So why won’t the governement accept that agreement and use those modalities that we put there with both teams and fund the system?”, he said.