By Abdullahi Yunusa
Against widespread rumour that the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has called off its over one-month old strike, the union president, Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie has come out to say that the strike action is still on.
In a telephone interview with our reporter yesterday, the ASUU boss confirmed the rumour saying, “I also heard that the strike has been called off, so I wonder where those spreading the news got their information from,” he questioned.
According to Prof Awuzie, “I can confirm to you that the strike has not been called off. Though a meeting between the Federal Government and ASUU team has been scheduled for Monday next week, but as it is now, the strike is still very much ongoing”.
Commenting further on the proposed meeting between ASUU and Federal Government on Monday, Prof Awuzie said “we hope that something positive comes out of the meeting. We are very ready to cooperate with government on the issue,” he assured.
Last week Prof Awuzie had maintained that lecturers in public universities won’t return to work until government shows seriousness in the implementation of the agreement it entered with the union in 2009.
According to him, ASUU can only contemplate calling off or suspending the ongoing strike action if the Federal Government shows seriousness by presenting a workable blueprint on how it intends to address issues raised in the agreement it entered with university lecturers.
He said: “As a body, ASUU is not happy that university education has been grounded in the country. We are disturbed and that is why we are asking government to interest of all address the growing decay in the nation’s tertiary education system by implementing the agreement it entered into with us few years back”.
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