Osogbo — Former Student Union leaders of
Obafemi Awolowo University OAU, Ile-Ife have condemned what they
describe as the insensitiveness of the federal government to the 2009
agreement it entered with the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU.
The student Unionists also threw their weight behind the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by their teachers.
Rising from a meeting held at the Awolowo Hall Café of the institution, the student activists including former officers of the Students' Union Government of OAU urged the federal government to identify with the plights of the striking workers and fully implement the agreement it entered with them.
Besides, the student activists accused the national secretariat of National Association of Nigerian Students NANS of nonchalant attitude towards the ongoing strike and therefore called on the national students' body to democratically take active position in support of the ongoing strike.
In the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, Monday when the student activists visited the Correspondents' Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Osun State chapter during a protest to drove home their positions. They also called for the immediate reinstatement of all proscribed students' unions by the management of the institution.
"We support the demands of ASUU for proper funding of education and appropriate welfare conditions of its members. As major stakeholders in the university system, having considered our day to day plight as students, we conclude that we are bereaved that ASUU as a union is only assisting us to seek a permanent solution.
"The avalanches of problem in the universities are rooted in callous underfunding. Our politicians spend the bulk of our budget every year to enrich themselves and loot the rest, yet education, a key sector of the economy is given a meager 8.6% in budgetary percentage. Meanwhile, the steps ASUU is currently taking are steps which the national student movement in its hay days would have taken before the academic staff," the communiqué read.
The inscriptions on placards displayed by the students during the protest read: "No To Incessant Ban on Students' Unions; Reinstate OAU Union now; OAU Students Demand the Immediate Removal of Prof. Wale Omole as LAUTECH Pro-Chancellor; Prof. Wale Omole should be executed not elevated; Education is a Right, not a priviledge.
The student Unionists also threw their weight behind the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by their teachers.
Rising from a meeting held at the Awolowo Hall Café of the institution, the student activists including former officers of the Students' Union Government of OAU urged the federal government to identify with the plights of the striking workers and fully implement the agreement it entered with them.
Besides, the student activists accused the national secretariat of National Association of Nigerian Students NANS of nonchalant attitude towards the ongoing strike and therefore called on the national students' body to democratically take active position in support of the ongoing strike.
In the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, Monday when the student activists visited the Correspondents' Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Osun State chapter during a protest to drove home their positions. They also called for the immediate reinstatement of all proscribed students' unions by the management of the institution.
"We support the demands of ASUU for proper funding of education and appropriate welfare conditions of its members. As major stakeholders in the university system, having considered our day to day plight as students, we conclude that we are bereaved that ASUU as a union is only assisting us to seek a permanent solution.
"The avalanches of problem in the universities are rooted in callous underfunding. Our politicians spend the bulk of our budget every year to enrich themselves and loot the rest, yet education, a key sector of the economy is given a meager 8.6% in budgetary percentage. Meanwhile, the steps ASUU is currently taking are steps which the national student movement in its hay days would have taken before the academic staff," the communiqué read.
The inscriptions on placards displayed by the students during the protest read: "No To Incessant Ban on Students' Unions; Reinstate OAU Union now; OAU Students Demand the Immediate Removal of Prof. Wale Omole as LAUTECH Pro-Chancellor; Prof. Wale Omole should be executed not elevated; Education is a Right, not a priviledge.
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