How to avoid incessant ASUU strikes – Former UI VC
Prof. Idowu Olayinka, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, believes that improving academic staff welfare and prioritizing education are effective approaches to avoid Academic Staff Union of Universities strikes (ASUU).
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Ibadan on Monday, Olayinka revealed this (NAN).
He emphasized that the current ASUU strike was the union’s 20th nationwide strike in the last 30 years.
The system had also lost approximately five calendar years, according to the former vice chancellor, due to frequent strikes by university instructors.
He recounted how the strike got national attention in the 1990s when ASUU came up with some clever car stickers in protest of the university system’s low earnings.
‘My boss is a comic; the wage he pays is a joke,’ said the don, referring to some of the stickers. ‘My take-home pay cannot take me home.’
According to Olayinka, at least one million university students were stranded as a result of the strike, “due to the shutdown of all 49 federal and most of the 57 state-owned colleges.”
To avoid incessant strikes, he believes that boosting welfare is critical.
As a means of encouraging sustainable economic development in the university system, Olayinka argued for enhanced economy through synergy among government, industry, and academics.
He also encouraged the government to investigate the possibility of developing a homegrown payment gateway.
“The Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) should be retired by the government based on a cost-benefit analysis.
“The academic eggheads should be challenged to come up with a homegrown answer, akin to the much-maligned University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS),” he stated.
According to NAN, ASUU began a four-week rollover strike on February 14 and then prolonged it for another eight weeks.
The current strike, which is in its 12th week, means that a full academic semester is likely to be lost, according to the former vice chancellor.
“It’s not so much about the incredibly disruptive, upsetting, and painful strike as it is about the reality that, if suitable steps are not done, it may, unfortunately, not be the last long-term strike,” he said.
The scenario had been the same with successive administrations in the country, according to Olayinka, who added that workers’ welfare had further deteriorated due to the country’s present economic downturn. (NAN)
