ASUU STRIKE: Why CONUA lecturers must join strike action- Student group
PRESS STATEMENT
As the ASUU strike continues, lecturers in Obafemi Awolowo University have been divided because of the factionalisation of the union in the University. The Education Rights Campaign while we do not encourage factionalisation, except when it is based on matters of principle of the struggle, decries the problems that the factionalisation has caused for the students of the campus.
The long overdue strike to demand that the Federal Government honor an agreement that it willfully entered into to fund education is by all means justified on the principle of workers solidarity. The consideration of members of the CONUA to ensure stable academic calendar that students keep going to class and break the strike with the help of their worker members, is not only a betrayal of this principle but also a self defeating position.
It is obvious that the students cannot be examined on the classes taken by the ASUU members who have decided not to come to class in compliance with the strike. This can only mean that at the end of the day, the semester would still have to be elongated to accommodate their own classes, and OAU's calendar will not be any more stable than that of the schools that have embarked on the justified strike.
This implies that the excuse of CONUA, a pressure group, to help stabilize the academic calendar is at best halfhearted. We opine that it is impossible to have a stable academic calendar when student's unionism and activism is under the hammer of repression, accommodation and welfare policies on the campus are nothing to write home about, and there is the threat of fee increment to the tune of about Eighty Five thousand naira at the College of Health Sciences. Without fundamentally addressing the problem of underfunding that this strike seeks to address, there is no shortcut to solving all of these problems that pose the threat of instability. We can only deduce that the division is being exploited by the University management to show loyalty to the failed Buhari Government, in return for future personal and political favours.
It is on this basis that we urge for the unity of the unions for the purpose of this strike. We, in the ERC, urge that the CONUA should support the ASUU strike to ensure that the strike successfully achieved its aim of securing the proper funding of the education sector.
We opine that unions are pressure groups and should not be used as platforms for campaign and support for candidates aspiring for top positions within the University management, rather unions should pressure the management to democratize the institution as much as possible towards having elected representatives of students, parents, teaching and non teaching staff, and community members governing the affairs of the institution.
SIGNED:
Dunnex Samuel (Ag. Coordinator)
EDUCATION RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, O. A. U BRANCH
As the ASUU strike continues, lecturers in Obafemi Awolowo University have been divided because of the factionalisation of the union in the University. The Education Rights Campaign while we do not encourage factionalisation, except when it is based on matters of principle of the struggle, decries the problems that the factionalisation has caused for the students of the campus.
The long overdue strike to demand that the Federal Government honor an agreement that it willfully entered into to fund education is by all means justified on the principle of workers solidarity. The consideration of members of the CONUA to ensure stable academic calendar that students keep going to class and break the strike with the help of their worker members, is not only a betrayal of this principle but also a self defeating position.
It is obvious that the students cannot be examined on the classes taken by the ASUU members who have decided not to come to class in compliance with the strike. This can only mean that at the end of the day, the semester would still have to be elongated to accommodate their own classes, and OAU's calendar will not be any more stable than that of the schools that have embarked on the justified strike.
This implies that the excuse of CONUA, a pressure group, to help stabilize the academic calendar is at best halfhearted. We opine that it is impossible to have a stable academic calendar when student's unionism and activism is under the hammer of repression, accommodation and welfare policies on the campus are nothing to write home about, and there is the threat of fee increment to the tune of about Eighty Five thousand naira at the College of Health Sciences. Without fundamentally addressing the problem of underfunding that this strike seeks to address, there is no shortcut to solving all of these problems that pose the threat of instability. We can only deduce that the division is being exploited by the University management to show loyalty to the failed Buhari Government, in return for future personal and political favours.
It is on this basis that we urge for the unity of the unions for the purpose of this strike. We, in the ERC, urge that the CONUA should support the ASUU strike to ensure that the strike successfully achieved its aim of securing the proper funding of the education sector.
We opine that unions are pressure groups and should not be used as platforms for campaign and support for candidates aspiring for top positions within the University management, rather unions should pressure the management to democratize the institution as much as possible towards having elected representatives of students, parents, teaching and non teaching staff, and community members governing the affairs of the institution.
SIGNED:
Dunnex Samuel (Ag. Coordinator)
EDUCATION RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, O. A. U BRANCH
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