Strike: ASUU rejects crowdfunding intervention, asks parents to take up fight

There was a mild drama yesterday when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) rejected Berekete Family Radio’s crowd-funding intervention to end the ongoing strike.

The president of ASUU, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, also said one of the ways in which the union might consider going back to classroom was when the parents who have their wards in public universities take up its struggles to the doorstep of the federal government, which is mainly to revitalise the ivory towers.

The ASUU has been on strike since February and all efforts to make the lecturers return to the classrooms have not yielded results.

On Saturday morning, the host of the radio programme, Ahmad Isah, popularly known as ‘Ordinary President’, invited ASUU president, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke and his team to explain to Nigerians the perennial problems and state why the union is still on strike.

Isah also said he had set up a special intervention bank account domiciled in TAJ Bank to raise funds for the union, with a view to ending the strike.

Apparently to convince the union to buy into the idea of the intervention, Isah publicly showed the N50million cash donated by Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State.

Immediately the money was displayed, the ASUU president frowned at the development, saying they should not be associated with such plan.

At that point, Isah threatened to discontinue the intervention and many Nigerians who phoned in during the programme described ASUU as “insensitive.”

Reacting to ASUU president’s rejection, Isah, during the live programme, placed call to the account officer to close down the account, and urged members of the public who have contributed to the cause of ASUU to reach out to him for a refund of their money.

The striking lecturers’ demands include funding of the revitalisation of public universities, Earned Academic Allowances, University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) and promotion arrears.

Others are the renegotiation of 2009 ASUU-FG agreement and the inconsistency in the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System.