OAU Students Barricade Ibadan-Ife Road To Protest Lingering ASUU Strike
Students of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife in Osun state have barricaded the Ibadan-Ife road in protest of the lingering strike by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
It was gathered that the ongoing protest has led to a gridlock preventing the movement of vehicles along the Ibadan-Ife road, forcing motorists plying the road from Lagos to other parts of the country like Osun, Ondo, Benin and other parts as well as those coming to Lagos through the road to divert through Ipetu village to connect alternative route.
The protest by the OAU students is in response to the call by the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, for students nationwide to demonstrate against the government’s consistent inaction regarding challenges confronting the education sector.
NANS on Thursday also warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that without the resolution of the face-off between the Federal Government and staff unions in the university system that would lead to the reopening of the universities, it would prevent the two political parties from holding their presidential primaries in Abuja.
The National President, Sunday Asefon, in a statement, titled; “End ASUU Strike or Forget Political Activities in Abuja,” NANS said the development became necessary following failed peaceful attempts to ensure that the concerned authorities heed its earlier calls.
“I am compelled to write this morning being the beginning of a new month to address the unending ASUU Strike. We have given mediators time to prevail on the Federal Government to resolve issues with ASUU and ensure our students resume to their different campuses but it seems all mediation failed or failing as the case may be,” the statement partly reads.
“We have also in the past weeks seen those saddled with great responsibility in the education sector and those saddled with responsibilities of resolving labour crises declaring interests to contest for the seat of the President come 2023. We are surprised by their effrontery and total disrespect to the Nigerian people for having the courage to even moot the idea of contesting talkless of picking up the N100 million naira presidential form while students languish at home because of their collective failures,” NANS added.
Recall that ASUU had on February 14th 2022 embarked on industrial action in protest of the Federal Government’s failure to meet the 2009 agreement reached with the academic union
With the strike approaching its 90th day, in a statement issued on Monday, ASUU extended the industrial action by another 12 weeks. The decision was reached after a meeting of the union’s national executive council (NEC) on Sunday at its University of Abuja secretariat.
Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has appealed to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to consider the plight of Nigerian students and call off the ongoing strike.
In the same vein, the president called on the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) to exercise patience assuring that the federal government is engaging the union in resolving the crisis.
Buhari made the appeal on Thursday at the 19th National Productivity Day Celebration at the statehouse conference centre, Abuja.
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