BY OLA AJAYI
IBADAN- Leaders of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, have resolved to commence a one-week warning strike from 26 September, to force government to honour a pact it reached with the union.

Part of the agreement include review of  the retirement age of lectures to 70 years of age, implementation of the Earned Allowances Component and drastic improvement on funding of education in general and the universities in particular

The decision to embark on the warning strike was part of the decisions reached at a 3-day meeting of the ASUU’s National Executive Council, NEC, in Ibadan.

Speaking after the meeting, President of ASUU, Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie, said unless the government addressed members’ demands, the academic activities in the nation’s universities would be paralysed during the action.

He called on well-meaning Nigerians, students; civil society organisations and organised labour to prevail on the Federal Government to implement the agreement to avoid the planned strike.

The union condemned the ethnicization of the appointment of Vice Chancellor and lecturers to universities in the country, lamenting that it had degenerated to the use of fetishism as reported during the appointment of a Vice Chancellor at the University of Benin.

Professor Awuzie cited the University of Ibadan as an example where he claimed over 70 percent of the lecturers came from the South West part of the country and same at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

He said ASUU took exception to the call for restriction of members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, to their regions saying it constituted a direct assault on the Nigerian nationhood.

According to him, “It is a consequence of the government inability to tackle headlong the various fronts of insecurity bedeviling the country. Our union views the matter of ethnic discord, religious crisis and wanton destruction of lives and property as inconsistent with the character of the good people of this country.”

While calling on Nigerians to be vigilant and not allow themselves to be used by destructive politicians, he condemned alleged divisive tendencies in the appointment of VCs, arguing that it was sad that primordial sentiments had been introduced into universities.

He gave the example of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology where he alleged primordial interests were used in the appointment of the VC.