•UNIBEN main gate
Academic activities were halted today for several hours at the two campuses of the University of Benin in Ugbowo and Ekheuan Road as the Academic Staff Union of Universities joined a one-day protest organised across the country over the non-implementation of the 2009 agreement reached with the federal government.
The lecturers and other academic staff took the protest from the ASUU hall in the Ugbowo main campus to the office of the Vice Chancellor, where they were received by top management staff, reports The PUNCH.
Armed with placards bearing different inscriptions, they chant solidarity songs around the campus as they call on the federal government to implement the renegotiated 2009 agreement reached with the union.
They were received at the Vice Chancellor’s office by the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academics, Professor Victor Igbineweka and the Registrar, Ademola Bobola.
Chairman of ASUU, Ray Chikogu, said, “In 2009, we entered into an agreement with the federal government and agreed as well that every three years, that agreement will be up for review.
“As we speak, it is 16 years after that agreement was signed, meaning that that agreement ought to have been reviewed five time.
“In this country, we are the only group of people who have been subjected to that kind of treatment, and we are saying we can’t take it anymore.
We want to tell Nigerians that we have been on the same salary for 16 years; it has never happened anywhere in the world, it is only in Nigeria that lecturers and academics are treated with so much disdain.
“If you go around the world, countries are investing in their education; it is only in Nigeria that we allocate paltry sums to education. But we are saying that will not let education die in Nigeria, and so the federal government must rise up to its responsibilities.”
He said they would shut down the university education in Nigeria and would not resume until all their demands were met.
In his response, Bobola said all they have said would be put together and sent to the federal government “because nobody wants ASUU to go on strike again.”
He said that he believed the current administration, through the minister, seemed to be interested in repositioning education.
