UNIOSUN: Why we won’t join ASUU strike

The Osun State University (UNIOSUN) says it has no intention of joining the ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

The institution’s management spoke about the ongoing industrial action on Monday in a statement signed by Adesoji Ademola, its PRO.

According to NAN, the management’s position is contrary to comments by Wende Olaosebikan, the acting chairman of the varsity’s ASUU branch.

Adesoji said the institution will not join the ASUU strike so as not to disrupt the school academic calendar.

“The selling point of UniOsun is that we don’t miss or extend our academic calendar. Our four years is always four years,” he said.

“We have, at a point called the ASUU national chairman, and we made our position known concerning joining ASUU strikes.

“We want to inform university students, stakeholders, and the general public that UniOsun has no plan to join the strike. Our students have resumed the rain semester academic session and lectures will commence very soon.”

Adesoji urged all students to disregard any information claiming UniOsun will soon join the ASUU strike.

On February 15, ASUU began a four-week rollover strike following the government’s failure to meet its demands.

Emmanuel Osodeke, ASUU president, said the decision was taken after its national executive committee meeting.

Osodeke also said since the last meeting the union had with the federal government in December 2021, it had not received any formal invitation towards acting on ASUU’s demands.

He disclosed that ASUU extended the strike by another two months to afford FG more time to address all of its demands.

Osodeke said the NEC concluded that the government had failed to satisfactorily address all the issues raised in the 2020 memorandum of action (MoA) within the four-week roll-over strike period, hence the eight-week extension.

ASUU is demanding that the federal government implements the MoA it signed with the union in December 2020 on funding for the revitalisation of public universities (both federal and state).

The union’s demands also include the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU agreement and the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS).

Other demands of the union as listed by ASUU include earned academic allowances, promotion arrears, withheld salaries, and non-remittance of third-party deductions.