ASUU begins strike, accuses FG of insincerity

THE Academic Staff Union of Universities has ordered its members to embark on strike following the Federal Government’s refusal to implement the agreement it signed with the union in 2009. The strike commenced midnight on Sunday
The government had promised to honour the agreement reached two years ago on the adequate funding of the universities and other sundry issues after a meeting with ASUU in September.
A Memorandum of Understanding by both parties was signed at the meeting with the Ministers of Education and Labour and Productivity in attendance.
But ASUU President, Prof.Ukachukwu Awuzie, said in Port Harcourt on Sunday, that the government had deliberately refused to honour the agreement.
Awuzie regretted that rather than executing the content of the accord, the government sacked the Implementation Monitoring Committee that served as the forum for a dialogue with ASUU on the dispute.
He wondered why the government did not make any move to implement the core components of the agreement, even when the union granted its (government) request for a two-month grace to begin the implementation process.
Awuzie said, “NEC, having noted that the Federal Government neglected, failed and refused to implement the core components of the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement after more than two years of its signing, having squandered the two months it requested without  achieving any progress in the implementation of agreement, having sacked the Implementation Monitoring Committee that serves as the forum for a dialogue with ASUU on this dispute, is convinced that government is terribly insincere and is manifestly unwilling to genuinely implement the agreement it freely entered into with ASUU.
“The government has abandoned the main tenets of industrial democracy-that all agreements freely entered must be honoured. NEC of ASUU, therefore, resolved painfully, to direct all members of ASUU in all branches nationwide to proceed on a total, comprehensive and indefinite strike beginning from the midnight of Sunday, 4th December 2011.”