Clement Chup is the zonal coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Abuja.
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The Minister of Education recently said ASUU strike would be over in a few months. What is the position of ASUU?
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I may not be in a position to give you the official position of ASUU, it is the National President that would give you the official position, but I want to tell you that there is a lot of insincerity on the part of government and, because government has the machinery of propaganda at their disposal, they disseminate a lot of falsehood to the general public.
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We are not talking about what government wants to do; what we are talking about is the implementation of an agreement which was signed by government and our union. So what government should be explaining is the modality for the implementation; so far, government has not come out to say this is what we will do. Rather, what government is trying to do is to run away from the agreement and we cannot accept that because the agreement is binding.
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Government must be honorable and responsible and implement the agreement. To buttress their insincerity, government would claim, and they have been telling the general public, that they released N100 billion two months ago. Up till now that we are talking, one kobo has not been released to any university, that is to tell you how insincere government is. So when they say we would as from next year make budgetary provision for so so and so amount, the question we should be asking ourselves is , what was spelt out in the agreement, which we are insisting they should implement? They cannot even give you an answer. In as much as we painfully went into this strike and, in as much as we are painfully pursuing this strike, in as much as we want this strike to end, we cannot just end it without achieving the purpose for which we went on the strike. So, as long as government does not show any sincerity to implement the agreement, the strike continues.