ASUU-Benin Zone calls on Nigerians to wake up and join the union to rescue the nation’s university system from dying.

Benin Zone of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has pleaded with Nigerians to join it to rescue the nation’s university system from dying.

The appeal was made yesterday, April 11, 2022 by Prof. Fred Esumeh, The Zonal Coordinator, ASUU-Benin Zone, while addressing journalists in Benin City.

He said: “ASUU is calling on all-well meaning Nigerians to wake-up and join the union in salvaging what remains of the country by repositioning the universities to be globally competitive and able to produce the manpower required to jump-start the re-emergence of a technological and economic power.

“On February 14, 2022, ASUU, after more than a calendar year of exploring all available and legitimate means in its effort to compel the Federal Government to honour the terms of the Memorandum of Action it signed with the union on December 2020, we were left with no option, other than to declare a four-week roll-over strike.

“But at the expiration of the four weeks when the government created the impression that it required more time to address the issues at stake, ASUU rolled over the strike for another eight weeks to provide the Federal Government with more than sufficient time to comprehensively sort out the patriotic demand by the union.

“The representatives of government continue to toy with the future of our children, students and nation, such that 57 days after they were sent packing from the institutions, the resolution of the principal outstanding issues of the deployment of the University Transparency Accountability Solution, UTAS, and the signing and implementation and the 2009 FGN-ASUU agreement remains at the level of mere proposals, fruitless and empty assurances.

“Yet these are issues that could have been adequately resolved in weeks by any well meaning and serious minded government.”