The latest news about the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is that a fracas broke out at the Nigerian University of Benin in Edo State on Monday after members of the union disrupted lecturers as they were holding classes.
Some lecturers at the university recently started teaching again amid the five-month-long strike.
The Daily Post reported that ASUU members stormed the school and attempted to stop lecturers who were holding classes there.
Witnesses said that the so-called “ASUU task force,” as the Daily Post said, disrupted a lecture on computer science.
ASUU members also clashed with police who were at the institution at the behest of the university’s vice-chancellor to enforce the lecturers’ resumption of teaching.
On Monday, President Goodluck Jonathan pleaded for the union to call off the strike–just days after the federal government threatened to sack lecturers who wouldn’t return to work.
“This administration recognizes and respects the right of workers, including the right to embark on industrial action to press home their demand and has taken concrete steps to address the grievances of ASUU.I therefore use this occasion to call on ASUU to call off its strike,” Jonathan said, reported The Punch.
Jonathan said the union has the right to take part in the industrial action, which falls in contrast to statements made by Minister of Education Nyesom Wike in late November.
“With this, Nigeria’s quest to become one of the world’s 20 largest economies by the year 2020 cannot be achieved in an atmosphere of industrial disharmony. Nigeria’s geopolitical history has been characterized by incessant labor disputes and industrial actions,” said the president.
He added: “While views may differ on the utility of industrial action as a means of advancing the collective interest of workers in the polity, it is an unassailable fact that labor and industrial harmony is sine qua non for the socio-economic development of any nation, Nigeria inclusive.”
Members of the ASUU on Sunday said they would not return to work despite the government saying they would lose their jobs.
“The managements of the schools say they have re-opened, but is any lecture going on? ASUU does not close schools anyway, we can only suspend our services,” a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ASUU told ThisDay.
The ASUU went on strike in July after it said the federal government failed to implement a deal that would boost teachers’ welfare and improve state-run universities.
The strike has left hundreds of thousands of students across the country in a state of limbo in what is essentially a lost semester
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