#ASUUStrike: NANS pledges solidarity.

ASUU STRIKE: NANS MEETS ASUU PLEDGES SOLIDARITY.

National Association of Nigerian Students, (NANS), Southwest( Zone D), has pledged its support for the Association of Staff Union Universities (ASUU), in its ongoing strike action.

The leadership of the zone headed by the Coordinator, Comrade Adegboye Emmanuel Olatunji, popularly known as “Teejay”, made this known in an official Press Release that was made available to the public in the early hours of 22nd of February 2022.

It should be recalled that the National body of the association, led by the National President, Mr. Sunday Asefon, had earlier threatened to mobilize students against ASUU, and to stall the progress of the demands of the Union.

Read below, the Press Statement:

The leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS ZONE D) today, the 22nd February 2022 held an all important meeting with the leadership of ASUU LAGOS ZONE, basically over the ongoing one month warning strike embarked upon by its members across the Nation.

After much deliberations and intellectual engagement between both bodies , we assured the union of our solidarity and support in this titanic struggle. A major reason why we have considered to join our lecturers in demanding for their right is significantly the decay in infrastructure and social amenities across our universities thereby making teaching and learning process difficult for both the students and lecturers even as we are not unaware that their children are studying in diaspora.

As the most ideological zone in the apex students governing body NANS , we will mobilize machineries and our foot soldiers in solidarity with ASUU until the federal government meets all their major demands.

It’s a sad development to know that Federal government has not been funding most institutions created, and have turned same to a means of embezzling funds, thereby making most of this universities to extort students due to the retrogressive nature of the Nigerian education sector, leaving school managements with no option than to source for funds by any means which includes charging students high to access the same education they got for free.

It is worthy of note that the agitation and demands of our lecturers include; funding for the revitalization of public universities, earned academic allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution, and promotion arrears, others are the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FGN Agreement, and the inconsistencies in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

Finally, ASUU LAGOS Zone proposed that the only solution to the ongoing warning strike is amending the present law of university creations, adopting the system that supports that quality payment structure for educational workers, and adopting measures that must not further jeopardize the future of Nigerian Students but rather measures that prove and show the commitment that our leaders truly have our interest at heart.

Viva Aluta!

Comrade Adegboye Emmanuel Olatunji pka Teejay
Coordinator, NANS Southwest (ZONE D)

TakeitBack Movement Blames FG For Impending ASUU Strike, Calls On Students To Support The Union’s Demands

TakeitBack Movement Blames FG For Impending ASUU Strike, Calls On Students To Support The Union’s Demands

A year after suspending a nine-month-old industrial action, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says it would soon embark on an indefinite strike to reinforce its demands as it accuses the government of going back on their agreement.

To press home their demands, the Union had announced Monday, 7th of February, 2022, as a lecture-free day in universities across the country to inform the university communities and the public on the government’s failure to fulfill the agreement the parties entered into in December 2020, which led to the suspension of the then 9-month prolonged strike.

Given this development, the student wing of the TakeitBack Movement has issued a press statement decrying the proposed strike action by the union and the deadlock engagements between the federal government and ASUU.

Lamenting that students were the ones bearing the brunt, the Movement blamed the government for the pathetic state of education in the country and appealed to Nigerian students to support ASUU in its bid to salvage the education system from total collapse.

The press statement, dated February 7, 2022 with the headline “Proposed ASUU Strike: As Public Education Dies, We Must Rise”, signed by the National Coordinator of the student’s wing of the TakeitBack Movement, Damilare Adenola reads:

“Since 1999, Nigerian Universities have been on strike for a cumulative period of four years. If there is anything that has been constant about the Nigerian student’s academic calendar, it is the Academic Staff of University Union (ASUU) and the Federal government gripping each other’s throats over the funding of Nigerian Universities, better working conditions amidst other demands.

“Unsurprisingly, the student wing of the Take It Back Movement has again received the news of ASUU beginning mobilisation in a plan to embark on an indefinite strike, while kick-starting with a lecture-free day declaration for today 7th of February 2022. Whereas there are also indications that by February 14th the Union in the upper echelon will take the bold step in order to compel.

“Again, students of public institutions will be forced out of classes, deprived of their right to education as lecturers plan to put classrooms under locks and keys for the 16th time since 1999. However cruel and painful the proposed industrial action feels, it is important to pinpoint the real fountainhead of this unending menace facing public education in Nigeria today.

“Equipping public institutions with 21st-century facilities, employing enough lecturers to match the ratio of students and adequate payment of staff, Revitalization of the dying public education is ASUU’s chief demand and for which they have for decades been uncompromisingly pressing home.

“Providing free and quality education; instead of the Federal Government fulfilling the basic constitutional duty owed to Nigerian students, has further quickened the death of public education by underfunding the most crucial sector of any Nation desirous of peace and development. This year for instance, out of 16.39 trillion general budgetary allocations, N1.29 trillion, amounting to a paltry 7.9 per cent was allocated to education against the United Nations benchmark of 15-20 per cent.

“It is in thought with the above facts that we direct Nigerian students to own the struggle for the revitalization of education, spearheaded by ASUU. And in the spirit of solidarity rise up in protest against the deliberate act of the government to deprive children of the masses from accessing education.”