Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, just called off their strike which lasted eight months, one of the longest industrial actions by the union. In this interview aired on Channels TV, the National President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, speaks on why the action took that long among other issues. Excerpts:
After eight months of industrial action, would you say your members are now fully back to work?
Our own is that we have suspended the strike and it is left for government to do the needful. As members and leaders of the union, we have done our part.
Are you sure your members are happy to go back to work?
As you can see from our press release through which we announced the suspension of the strike, we are obeying court orders, as we are a law abiding union. No agreement was signed. We hope the intervention of the Speaker of the House of Representatives will be holistic and all issues resolved as they should be.
It is obvious that your union is not happy with the turn of things
Definitely. How can members be happy when they were practically forced to go back to work without issues trashed out and demands met? The best option for resolving issues like this is negotiation, but that was not done. You don’t railroad people that way. Our members will go and teach, but getting a man who is hungry, who is indebted, who is owing banks loans because his salary was not paid to be happy to teach is another thing.
That means students will be at the receiving end
That is a question you should ask government. If you have seen the statements by some universities announcing their resumption activities and dates, you would see that they are starting from where the 2021 session stopped before the strike. That means lecturers would still have to complete the backlog of workloads.
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