Olorode To ASUU Leadership Over Court Ruling: Call Off Strike, Declare Another Now

A prominent leader of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, in Nigeria and an human rights activists, Professor Omotoye Olorode has called on the current leadership of ASUU led by Professor Emmanuel Osodeke to call off the current ongoing strike by ASUU which was embarked upon seven months ago and declare another one immediately.

Professor Omotoye Olorode made the call on Wednesday evening while speaking to the Treasure Newspaper and reacting to the court judgement directing ASUU leadership to call off it’s prolonged strike action and resume back to work immediately.

Olorode in his submission told Nigerians to take their time to study the reason and the purpose behind the strike embarked upon by ASUU for them to know that, the strike is not for personal aggradisement but that it is targeted at making the Country’s educational sector able to compete favourably with that of the other Countries in the world. 

According Olorode, he said, “what the government is trying to do is to implement a forced labour situation. They want lecturers to work under conditions that are not possible, that the employer is insisting on. And that is why we said, that the modern workers have been turned to slaves. The modern worker is a slave where the employer think they can pay workers anything.

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Nigerians should asked what has happened to NEPA workers, Doctors and so on. You know, NEPA people were up in action the other day as well as Doctors. All these things about No Work No Pay and all of that is about reducing working people to slaves.

Continuing, he said, “the Federal Government is fond of compelling workers to work. They should know that it is not every workers that they can force. Nigerians should know that, this is not just a Buhari thing. The Nigeria Ruling Class has decided to operate an economy based on forced labour”. 

“If you looked at the map of Nigeria, like the map circulated the other day, more than the half of the States are owing workers arrears of salaries and they expect them to work. They are creating private organizations, private educational organizations such as hospitals, security and the rest where employers can just pay anything they want”. 

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Taking for example, in Ogbomoso, graduate teachers are earning less. And sure, it’s not just Ogbomoso. 

He urged Nigerians to stop thinking that everybody in the Country will give up and surrender to this nonsense. If they do, our people and our Country should know they will be endangered. Our people needs to know this. 

Explaining further, Olorode revealed that the difference between other people and the lecturers is that, lecturers are paid to think. Lecturers are paid to talk aloud so that our people can know that they can free themselves.

Look at how much monies the ruling class in Nigeria are stealing and they are saying there is no money. ASUU and the lecturers have all the records of the monies being stolen by our ruling class. 

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Our expectation has been that, they wanted to ban ASUU which means that, people no longer remember history. Under the military, lecturer Unions were banned several times. And the second day, we formed another Union, so this thing is not for playing. We have passed the stage where the Country’s ruling class can intimidate Nigerian workers even when the leaders of workers are endorsing such intimidations. Ordinary workers will not.

Nigerians should know that ASUU is fighting their fight. The fight of engaging our people to start a liberation movement from the hands of the ruling class. It’s not just a Buhari thing as I have said earlier. It’s all over the place. Many States are owing workers with lots of backlog of salaries. They are sacking workers. Governor’s are coming together to say that anybody who is over 50 years should just be paid off. All of these things are going on. 

“He however counselled the leadership of ASUU to ignore the Federal Government, call off the current ongoing strike and declare another one. They should declare a new strike. So, Ngige can then go to court again”.

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“If there Industrial Court says we should call off the strike, we should declare another one immediately. Each time they say we should call off strike, we will call it off and declare another one, finish”, Olorode declared. 

“The Federal Government should realized that they can’t force any person to work.

They should go to the market and collect lecturers to teach in the University. After all, that is what private Universities are doing”. 

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