By   VINCENT UJUMADU
THE governing council of Anambra State University has urged striking lecturers of the institution to return to the classroom in the interest of students.

This came as authorities of the university said that more lecturers would be hired from institutions abroad to beef up the academic staff.

Chairman of the council, Professor Elochukwu Amucheazi, said at a news conference in Awka yesterday that the appeal became necessary because there was a renewed effort to catch up with the academic calendar.

According to him, all the staff of the university who have been signing the attendance register have been paid their salaries, including the agreed 60% increase.  He added that work had resumed in the two campuses.

He said that worried by the development in the state-owned university, many professors of the state origin abroad had volunteered to return home to teach in the university at reduced allowances.

The six-month old strike by ASUU members of the university took a new dimension last week when the state governor and visitor to the university, Mr. Peter Obi, sacked the Acting Vice Chancellor, Professor Chukwunenye Anene, and replaced him with Professor Fidelis Okafor, who was the provost of the state-owned Nwafor Orizu College of Education, Nsugbe.

The striking lecturers were insisting on salary parity with their counterparts in federal universities, hinging their demands on the agreement reached between ASUU and the federal government in 2009.

But the state government argued that the clause in the agreement made it abundantly clear that the agreement between ASUU and federal government affected only lecturers in federal universities, adding that states had to negotiate with workers in their universities based on their ability to pay.

Governor Obi, in a broadcast last week, said that based on available resources, the institution’s governing council increased the salaries of the lecturers substantially after a long period of negotiation.