The University lecturers under the umbrella of Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU have alleged that the duo of the Senate and House of Representatives abandoned the staff union to its fate after its protracted industrial action.
The Informant247 recalls that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) ASUU had embarked on industrial action since February this year.
The lingering industrial action has been linked to the non-implementation of the 2009 agreement which was entered into with the federal government of Nigeria.
While lamenting that the staff union has been ignored by the country’s law making chambers, the union said that it forwarded letters to the House of Representatives and the Senate in September and October 2021 but did not receive any fruitful involvement before embarking on strike.
Professor Ayoola Akinwole, the ASUU Chairman at the University of Ibadan, made these confessions on Tuesday in Ibadan, the state capital of Oyo state.
Akinwole has explained that the National Assembly also did not fulfill its promise to the staff union before ASUU suspended the industrial strike in 2020.
Akinwole, said part of the promises of the National Assembly was to make sure that the 2021 budget welcomes the demands of ASUU.
It is regrettable to the union that the federal legislators refused to fulfil their promises.
According to Akinwole, “We wrote the Speaker House of Representatives in September 2021 who is now inviting ASUU to a meeting again as if he lived up to the promise he made to us while pleading with us to suspend strike in 2020.
“We also wrote the Senate through the Senate President in October of 2021. Nothing happened. They all abandoned us. We gave religious bodies an opportunity. It yielded nothing.
“Most of the government people are feeding Nigerians with lies. I have two of my children at home with me. ASUU President does not have children studying abroad.
“When it comes to the masses they will say no money but they increase their own allowances and heaven did not fall. ASUU does not want Nigeria to be irrelevant in the area of education”.