The City Reporters
The Nigeria Police in Kano state prevented the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Bayero University, Kano (BUK) chapter from holding her planned peaceful protest outside the university on Thursday.
The City Reporters learnt the protest was frustrated by policemen who blocked the entrance to the university and successfully forced the lecturers back into the university campus when they make attempts to rally outside the school premises.
The police feared the aggrieved ASUU members might gain public sympathy and that hundreds of jobless youths within the metropolis might take advantage of the protest.
Undaunted, the lecturers still went ahead and held a peacefully protest within the university.
Chairman of ASUU, BUK, Dr. Mahmud Lawan, expressed sadness over the denial and said that the strike would continue because the federal government was not ready to listen to them.
He added that the presence of armed police officers cannot prevent them for exercising their rights and that there would be no going back on the struggle for a better university system.
But for ASUU members at the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria branch, the peaceful march by its members aimed at enlighten the public on the Union’s position on the ongoing strike was successful.
Speaking with journalists after the march in Zaria, the Chairman of the university’s branch of ASUU, Mohammed Kabir-Aliyu, said the essence of the protest was to enlighten the public on the Union’s demands.
He insisted that the striking lecturers wanted the universities revitalised so that they could compete with others across the world.
“We are on strike because our universities are dying. We want our universities revitalised. We are not on strike because of allowances or salaries,” he said.
According to him, the strike is to compel the government to do the right thing which would in turn make the system work as it should and help in rekindle the hopes of children from indigent backgrounds.
Mr. Kabir-Aliyu said that government is not serious in meeting the Union’s demands. He urged government to address these demands with a view to save the nation’s education from total collapse.
Meanwhile, despite claims by the Federal government that the sum of N100billion had been disbursed to 59 public universities to improve infrastructure in the benefiting institutions, ASUU, has alleged that none of the universities had received the said sum.
Chairman of the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi branch of ASUU, Dr. Celestine Aguoru, said yesterday after leading members of the branch on a peaceful march around Makurdi town/ He said the lingering Federal Government/ASUU face-off is necessary as government is yet released the N100 billion they claimed they have given the universities; this goes to show the level of insincerity of the government.
His word: “The truth is that government is paying lip service to the development of education in this country and has therefore resorted to playing politics with the education sector and the future of our children.
“It is rather unfortunate that majority of those who are leading us today went to school in their time on scholarships, but today they do not want our children to benefit from that same gesture, all because of greed.
“Today we are faced with a situation where the amount Nigerians spend yearly to educate their children in Ghana is far more than the yearly budgetary allocation to the education sector.
“Our leaders are not being fair to our country, government should as a matter of priority implement its agreements with ASUU, Nigerians are tired of this deceit; they should remember that if they continue to negate their responsibilities to the people, one day they will certainly give account to God.”
