Over 1,000 anti-riot policemen yesterday in Calabar disrupted a protest march by the University of
Calabar branch of Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities, ASUU. This is even as the union said only justice to the 2009 agreement signed with the Federal Government can guarantee peace in public universities.
The police barricaded the university’s gate to prevent ASUU members from kick-starting the
demonstration, which the union claimed would have been peaceful. Addressing ASUU members at the school gate while speaking on the theme, “Save university education in Nigeria,” ASUU branch Chairman, UNICAL, Dr. James Okpileye, charged members to remain steadfast in the struggle of
winning the war against oppressive tendencies by the Federal Government.
Okpileye noted that recently ASUU wrote a letter to the police informing them of the union’s plan to embark on a peaceful road walk but to his greatest chagrin, police came and barricaded the institution’s gate, preventing his members from conducting it.
“Why would market women and students be allowed to carry out demonstrations but ASUU’s peaceful rally is being disrupted?” he asked. Also speaking, a former National ASUU President, Festus Iyayi, berated the Federal Government for employing savage strategy of ‘no-work-no-pay’ to cause starvation to lecturers, stressing that the teachers would not be intimidated by such “a theory of cascading mediocrity.” Iyayi said the introduction of no-work-no-pay was not new to the union, adding that when ASUU returned from the trenches, they would implement their own theory of ‘no - work-nopay.’
The ASUU branch Chairman, Cross River University of Technology, CRUTECH, Dr. Nsim Ogar, urged the police to be cautious in discharging their duties. He stressed that it was ASUU’s turn today, it could come to when the police too would be aggrieved with government’s poor funding of public institutions and might decide to fight for their right.
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