By Fatima Badawi
The Academic Staff Union of Universities, popularly known as ASUU, has organized a massive peaceful protest to express its strong disapproval of the government’s insincere promises and failure to fulfill agreements made to university lecturers.
Members of the union from Bayero University branch came out early this morning, marching around sections of the school while holding placards with inscriptions calling the government’s attention to do the needful.
While a TDRHausa correspondent was speaking with a senior official of the union, the official explained that there are numerous issues the government has failed to address for university lecturers, and the lecturers have been patient, but it seems their patience has run out.
Among the issues highlighted by the official include;
1) Lack of attention to the plight of lecturers.
2) Withholding the salaries of university lecturers because they went on strike, even though the law allows university lecturers to do so.
3) Failure to fulfill hundreds of promises the government made to improve the condition of universities and carry out reforms.
4) Withholding earmarked funds (Earned Academic Allowances) that university lecturers have been demanding from the government for years, and the government made several promises but broke them.
5) There is also the major problem of university lecturers’ salaries, where some of the lecturers have become pitiable, because even a professor’s salary is not enough to solve basic life problems, not to talk about medical expenses and school fees for their children, let alone their worry about academic pursuits.
Hundreds of union members came out for this massive peaceful protest, men and women, and it was done calmly but with concerns on how the government has neglected the welfare of lecturers across the country and broke all promises made.
This kind of protest is being held across all Nigerian universities to express strong displeasure against this injustice from the government.