ASUU: How Buhari’s TSA has forced us to go on strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, is about now putting the needed machinery in place to ensure that there is total compliance as it begins its one-week warning strike scheduled to begin Wednesday.

Chronic under-funding of the sector through low budgetary allocation, which went from 11 per cent in 2015 to eight per cent in 2016, was put forward as one of the reasons for the one-week warning strike by Biodun Ogunyemi, the union’s National President, while addressing newsmen on Monday.

The union also lamented that “With the introduction of TSA, the federal universities find it extremely difficult to discharge their core responsibilities of teaching, research and community services”.

Ogunyemi also pointed out the failure of government to implement the 2009 agreement and the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as some of the reasons for embarking on the warning strike, noting that members of ASUU were tired of what they described as “government’s empty promises’’.

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The one-week warning strike is going ahead even after the Senate expressed its resolve to wade into the matter by specifically asking the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, to intervene and prevent ASUU from embarking on the warning strike.

While noting that during the warning strike, there shall be no teaching, examination and no attendance at statutory meetings in all branches, the ASUU president also called on well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on the Federal Government to see to the demands of the union.

“With the release of the 2016 Annual Budget, our union wondered aloud why allocation to education dropped from 11 per cent in 2015 to eight per cent in 2016.

“We tried to correct the erroneous impression in government circles that the capital and research grants to universities were being handled by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund),” Ogunyemi said.

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