Skip to main content

Over 1000 Nigerian University Lecturers Ready To Resume Class – Parallel Academic Union, CONUA Boasts Amid Eight-Month Strike

Over 1000 Nigerian University Lecturers Ready To Resume Class – Parallel Academic Union, CONUA Boasts Amid Eight-Month Strike
October 5, 2022

The National Legal Adviser of CONUA, Misbau Alamu Lateef, insisted that they were over 1000 university lecturers, and ready to return to class.

 

The Congress of Nigerian University Academics (CONUA), a parallel union which claimed it broke out of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has claimed its members are ready to abandon the eight months’ lingering industrial action embarked upon by ASUU.

The National Legal Adviser of CONUA, Misbau Alamu Lateef, insisted that they were over 1000 university lecturers, and ready to return to class.

Lateef said this in a statement released on his Facebook page after the Nigerian government presented a certificate of registration to the union on Tuesday.

This came as the government and the main umbrella body of university lecturers, ASUU, continued talks over the 2009 FG/ASUU Agreement on funding university education which the government had failed to fully implement.

CONUA, a separate body with a presence in a few federal universities, is led by its National Coordinator, ‘Niyi Sunmonu, a lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife.

He said, “A little above four years ago (March 2018), we started the struggle to liberate Nigerian universities from the elitism of trade unionism and destructive strikes that have combined with perennial irresponsibility and failure governments (poor funding), to foist debilitating crisis on our universities.

“You need to understand the correlation between a stable academic calendar and quality education. We broke away from ASUU and started the Congress of University Academics (CONUA) right there on Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Campus where ASUU had been born about 4 decades earlier. Yours sincerely has been part of the struggle right from the beginning and up till now as the pioneer national legal coordinator for CONUA. It has been a tortous journey of several meetings and trips to Abuja, amongst several other challenges.

“To be clear, CONUA doesn't have anything against the majority of ASUU's demands. The demands, and we have always been part of the struggle, are mostly legitimate and noble. I say mostly because we do actually disagree with some of their demands. For example, we were the first to register on IPPIS and object to ASSU's UTAS. It is common sense.

“We insisted that the right approach was to insist on the government (our employer) incorporating our peculiarities into IPPIS rather than insisting, as ASUU has futilely done till now, that we must dictate a payroll or payment method to our employer. You will never see any example in the world where employees dictate to their employers the mode of payment of their wages. Yet, that's one of the major reasons ASUU has forced a strike on our universities for 7months plus.

“However, we have nothing personal against our teachers and seniors in ASUU. We are all friends and colleagues even as I type now. We mostly disagree on their modus operandi and ideology (outdated leftist mentality). So, the guiding philosophy of CONUA is Constructive Engagement to rebuild our universities without destroying them.

“What's in this for the hapless Nigerian students? The siege is over. I can assure you that there are 1000s of lecturers only waiting to get back to the classroom to resume their work while the struggle for better funding of universities continues without destroying the universities to build them.”