ASUU Strike: UNILAG Leads Mass Resignations Of Lecturers- Ashiru

ASUU Strike: UNILAG Leads Mass Resignations Of Lecturers- Ashiru

ASUU Strike – As a result of the federal government’s inadequate response to the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the University of Lagos (UNILAG) is outpacing other public tertiary institutions in terms of the number of lecturers quitting their positions.

In a recent interview with Arise Television, Dele Ashiru, the chairman of the UNILAG ASUU chapter, revealed that roughly 70% of the school’s top academics had left their positions.

The union blamed the change on the Federal Government’s mistreatment of its members, which it claimed drove many of them to seek out alternative means of support.

Speaking on Sunday, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, the national president of ASUU, bemoaned the fact that many academics had turned to farm and other forms of employment while a sizable number had fled the nation.

Osodeke spoke in response to the government’s defiance of some of their demands, such as the payment of the seven months’ worth of accrued salary backlog.

According to iexclusivenews Nigeria, during the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the union went on four strikes that lasted a combined 578 days.

ASUU’s current strike began on February 14, 2022, and on Monday it reached day 188. (today).

The lecturers boycotted work for 90 days in 2018, the union went on strike for 30 days in 2017, and the public universities were closed for 270 days in 2020.

The government was accused by ASUU of neglecting to disburse funding for university revitalization and of not using the University Transparency Accountability System to pay university professors’ wages and benefits.

The head of ASUU at the University of Lagos, Dr. Dele Ashiru, claimed that more than 70% of the best academic minds had fled the nation, adding that the government had treated them with such contempt and insensitivity.

“The impact of the government’s insensitivity and deployment of the weapon of hunger might not be immediately known until after the strike.

As I speak with you, more than 70 percent of bright and promising young academics retained by the university through mentorship have all left the country for greener pastures due to the poor conditions of service in Nigeria.

‘’Those that are left are on the verge of leaving. No government in the history of Nigeria has been so insensitive, brash, and disrespectful of the best brains in the country. This is unfortunate and a shame,’’ the don lamented.

Ashiru, in an interview with Arise TV, monitored by one of our correspondents on Sunday, said the union was not going to call off its strike action as done by the other academic unions.

He said, “ASUU is a union of intellectuals, we don’t look at what others do to make our decisions. We make our decisions based on verifiable facts and the facts available to us have not shown this government to be a responsible and sensible one.”