ASUU Strike:Students plan Nationwide protest.

PLANS may be underway by some Nigerian students to
organise from Tuesday, a mass protest aimed at
highlighting the woes bedeviling public education in the
country.
Organised by the Joint Action Front (JAF), the
protesting students in the South-West zone may block all
roads leading to Lagos State tomorrow.
According to JAF, the protests, which will kick off at the
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) office at Yaba, Lagos at
8 a.m., will also include zonal rallies in Kano, Ibadan,
Owerri, Calabar, Abuja, among others.
According to JAF, the aim is to draw attention to the
bleak future that awaits Nigerian children due to the
neglect of public education, “while children of top
politicians and government officials are trained in private
schools in Nigeria and abroad with funds looted from
public coffers.”
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) had,
on July 2, declared an indefinite strike over unresolved
issues contained in the 2009 FG/ASUU Agreement. The
union took the decision “after exhausting all available
avenues,” when the Federal Government breached a
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) they both signed
in January 2011. One of the contentious issues was the
non-payment of Earned Allowances.
But the Executive Secretary of the National Universities
Commission (NUC), Prof. Julius Okojie, swiftly criticised
ASUU’s action, describing it as unfortunate and capable
of destroying the university system.
Okojie told The Guardian: “They (universities teachers)
get their salaries. On the issue of allowances, why can’t
they persevere? The government did not say it would not
pay. What we said was that not all lecturers are entitled to
earned allowances. The figure they (ASUU) came up with
was huge and we said there was a need for
harmonisation, because not all of them were entitled to
it. We needed to determine which lecturer deserves to get
the Earn Allowance.”
However, a meeting organised by the Federal Ministry of
Education to resolve the issue ended in a deadlock. A
senior government official was quoted as saying that it
was impossible for the Federal Government to
implement the MoU. The union has also vowed not to
suspend the strike until its demands are met.