Posted by By MODESTUS CHUKWULAKA, Abuja on
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has again pleaded with President Umar Musa Yar'Adua to order the immediate reinstatement of the 49 dismissed lecturers of the University of Ilorin in the spirit of the agreement reached between it and the Federal Government in March.
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has again pleaded with President Umar Musa Yar'Adua to order the immediate reinstatement of the 49 dismissed lecturers of the University of Ilorin in the spirit of the agreement reached between it and the Federal Government in March.
It also wants the president to intervene and ensure that the on-going ASUU-Federal Government negotiations are concluded before the year runs out.
Specifically, ASUU wants the government to expedite negotiation in the areas of funding which is the basis for the restoration of the universities, remuneration of teachers, democratization of university system, university autonomy, review of the role of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and the Education Tax Fund (ETF).
ASUU President, Dr. Abdullahi Sule-Kano, who spoke to journalists in Abuja yesterday expressed surprise that the 49 lecturers, who were arbitrarily sacked at the University of Ilorin were yet to be reinstated nine months after the government had accepted to re-absorb the affected teachers as a condition for the suspension of ASUU's last strike in March, 2007.
Sule-Kano said his union had written to Yar'Adua, who is the visitor to the university, asking him to resolve the matter politically, pointing out that ASUU had assumed that once the reinstatement of the lecturers had been agreed by the parties at the negotiation table, they would be immediately recalled.
Expressing surprise that the government had failed to fulfil its part of the bargain, ASUU said the re-absorption of the 49 lecturers was something that Yar'Adua could handle as there was no disagreement between the parties as to the fact that the rights of the teachers had been violated.
Noting that his union had to suspend its last strike in deference to the appeal pledge made by the president that the contentious issues would be resolved, Sule-Kano said the National Executive Council of the union would meet and decide on further line of action should the government failed to conclude the outstanding aspects of the negotiations by the end of this month.
'The hopes raised by the presidential intervention in June in the academic community are yet to be realized," the ASUU president said, pointing out that so long as the negotiations remained open-ended, the effects would continue to be demoralization, discouragement, alienation and the one-way movement Nigerian lecturers to Southern Africa, Europe, the US and the Middle East.
Sule-Kano said ASUU had been particularly worried because it had hoped that any agreement reached in the course of the negotiation and which had financial implications must be provided for in the 2007 budget. 'Without a firm funding commitment anchored on the budget, the agreement, no matter how sound in content, would not yield result," he said, adding that it was for this that pressed for a speedy conclusion of the negotiation in view of earlier agreement that the negotiation would end in September.
According to Sule-Kano, 'the sense of importance and urgency attached to the president's pronouncement on the need to resolve the problems of the university system appear to have been lost," since 'federal and state budgetary exercises had not received any input arising from the vital negotiation on the funding of the universities."