The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Lagos Zone, has declared that the Federal Government had compelled university teachers to re-activate their suspended industrial action owing to failure to implement the agreement reached with the union.

The union also said the exit of its members from the controversial Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), which had been adopted by government to pay university lecturers, is a categorical imperative if strike must be avoided.

Addressing a press conference at the union secretariat in Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State, on Tuesday, the Lagos Zone Coordinator of ASUU, Adelaja Odukoya, decried how the Nigerian university system had been gasping for breath owing to the alleged deliberate attempt by the government, in concert with neoliberal institutions, to ground public tertiary education in the country.

He explained that inadequate funding, resulting in dilapidated teaching and research infrastructure, lack of modern equipment and resources, in addition to miserable remuneration, have eroded the past gains and glory of the nation’s university system.

Odukoya said, “Given government’s intransigence despite engaging in a robust reassessment of its 2009 agreement with the ASUU in December 2020, university teachers are once again being compelled to re-activate their suspended industrial action.

“This latest step has become imperative, given government’s determination to surrender the Nigerian University System to the rapacious plundering onslaughts and permutations of both short-sighted Nigerian officials and foreign agents of neoliberalism.

“One will be at a loss to understand the attitude of the government to education in the country in general and the condition of service of lecturers in Nigerian public university in particular except one comes to the ugly realization that there is an orchestrated, deliberate and systemic grand design for the oppression, dehumanization and impoverishment of Nigerian academics is as old as Nigeria’s post-independence statehood.”

The Zonal Coordinator, who was flanked by other leaders of the union, lamented the avoidable cost and collateral damage of the last nine months’ strike embarked upon by lecturers over government’s failure to honour agreement freely entered into with ASUU.

He added, “At the end of our review of government implementation of the MoA, true to character, the government as usual has failed woefully to honour its promises on the schedule of implementation it gave our Union at the two meetings between us in August and October, 2021.

“Consequent upon this sad development, our Union gave the Federal Government three weeks’ grace within which to comprehensively implement all the issues in our MoA failing which we shall have no other alternative than to commence the process of activating most reluctantly the strike option that has proven to be the only language this government understands.”

Odukoya expressed regret that with nine days to the one-year anniversary of the suspension of last ASUU strike and signing of the 2020 Memorandum of Agreement with the Federal Government to implement all its terms, the government “has adamantly and most shamefully refused, failed and neglected to do what was freely agreed to between us.”

The ASUU leader deplored the exorbitant cost of governance in the country, stressing that it was not commensurate with the abysmal contributions of the political class to the nation.

This explains the shameless propaganda of the government and in particular the supposedly conciliator, the Minister of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige who is making a mountain of an ant-hill because the drum of strike by our Union has compelled government to pay a paltry of the billions of naira of owed revitalization funds and EAA.

Odukoya claimed that in most of public universities in the country, there is harvest of death.

He said, “Sometimes as much as between six and ten in a month has become so common place experience on our campuses. Need I also stress that remuneration and the overall conditions of service are important determinants of workers’ productivity and achievement.

“This said, the game is up. Never in the history of our Union’s struggle against the rapacious exploitation and mis-rule of government has our members so resolved and united to confront palace jesters and the shenanigans of government without conceding an inch. Let it be known to the government that they have miscalculated this time around.”