- Obey court’s resumption order, group, parents beg ASUU
An Abuja youth group, Noble Youths Mass Support Association, has called on the Academic Staff Union of Universities to obey the resumption order issued by the National Industrial Court of Nigeria in Abuja on Wednesday.
The National Coordinator of the group, Mr Godwin Onmonya, made the call while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria in Gwagwalada, Abuja.
He said the strike was having negative impacts on students.
The union, through its President, Mr Emmanuel Osodeke, had embarked on a nationwide warning strike since February 14 to press home its demands, stressing that the action would continue until their demands were met.
Some of the lecturers’ demands include funding for the Revitalisation of Public Universities, Earned Academic Allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) and promotion arrears.
Others are the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FG Agreement and alleged inconsistency in the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System.
The strike, which entered its seventh month, forced the Federal Government to institute a suit at the court to halt the strike and enable students to resume.
However, students through the National Association of Nigeria Students embarked on protests by blocking the entrance to the International Airport Lagos, threatening to block other major roads, if the demands were not met by the government.
The court granted the resumption order, pending the determination of the substantive suit, at the instance of the Minister of Labour and Employment, pursuant to his powers on Labour Laws of the Federation.
Similarly, Mr Luka Ayuba, a parent in Gwagwalada Area Council, whose child was studying veterinary medicine at the University of Abuja, said that the strike had made his son shift focus to other things.
“After each episode of the strike, the children are no more focused and they end up not graduating within the stipulated years.
“My only pain is that the people in government are not feeling it because their own children are not in public schools but abroad or in private schools,” he said.
Meanwhile, ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Abuja, Dr Salawu Lawal, had earlier said there would be no resumption in public universities until the renegotiated 2009 agreement was signed and implemented and the University Transparency and Accountability Solution deployed. (NAN).
