ASUU hits back at Buhari after calling for end to strike

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has hit out at President Muhammadu Buhari after he asked the university lecturers to call off their almost five-month strike.

President Buhari had while receiving governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress who paid him a Sallah homage in his Daura home on Sunday, asked the university lecturers to consider the plight of students and return to the lecture rooms, saying “Enough is enough”

But the striking lecturers in a statement by Lagos ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Dr. Adelaja Odukoya, on Tuesday, said the prolonged strike was as a result of the leadership failure under Buhari.

In the statement entitled: “Mr President Sir: When and why Enough cannot be Enough,” the union taunted the President for waking up from his slumber to the reality that the strike had grounded public universities and taken a toll on parents, students and other stakeholders in the sector.

Odukoya said: “It is with painful and heartfelt amusement that we received your comical statement and laughable call yesterday that “enough is enough” on the almost five-month old strike action of our union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), occasioned and forced on us by the crass insensitivity, non-chalant disposition, ineptitude and crass indifference to the fate of public university education in the country under your leadership.

“That all other unions in the nation’s public university system as well as unions in other tertiary educational levels in the country are also on strike for similar reasons, belied and exposed the ridiculous disposition and propaganda to paint our union black in the face of the Nigerian public who has seen through the shenanigan, deliberate, systemic and orchestrated agenda of the present government.

“This is not only to undermine but to comprehensively destroy public university education in unpatriotic obedience to the slavish and destructive command of the neoliberal high command to which the soul of this administration and her forbears seems to be irrevocably sold.

“The fact that the president unfortunately and sadly taken and embraced an attitude of mute indifference and unedifying quietude in the face of calamitous consequences a neglected education sector could foist on generations of Nigerians, including those yet unborn is a clear signpost of leadership failure.

“Nigerian public university students remain at home while our dear president and his cronies lavish valuable time on partisan party political activities, family egoistic ceremonies and global junketing, and to have finally woken up to address the issue of the national strike in the nation public universities in a season of Eid Adha celebration – season that calls for utmost and supreme sacrifices exemplified by Prophet Ibrahim should elicits both spiritual and popular condemnation.

“The choice of this solemn occasion to trade blames rather than making sacrifice as the season demands appears more of gross lack of understanding of the enormity of the crisis. The usual window-dressing and buck-passing and inability to rise up to serious occasion affecting our country particularly the nation’s education sector is rather unfortunate.

“This is underscored by the sleep-walk disposition of the un-presidential response to an issue which has been prolonged and exacerbated due to presidential inaction. “Mr. President sir, for ASUU this strike action should not have lasted beyond the first week after it was declared because the issues at stake were neither new nor do they require rocket science to resolve given that there had been MOUs and MOAs as well as a duly renegotiated ASUU-FGN Agreement completed way back 13th May, 2020 before your government which you and your administration neglected and refused to implement and signed.

“Our Commander-in-Chief, if only your administration has taken the sacred responsibility for education and the future of the Nigerian youth seriously, this latter day unconvincing lamentation without doing anything would have been unnecessary. Your Excellency, your position is to be on top of issues and solve national problems no matter how tough the situation instead of hopeless lamentation and sermonizing.”