Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
To terminate the ongoing strike at the country’s public universities, a faction of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which is now on strike, has advocated for the liberalization of university academic unions.
In order to accomplish this, the faction working under the auspices of the Congress of University Academics, or CONUA, has made an appeal to the federal government via the Ministry of Labour and Employment to immediately register it as a trade union similar to ASUU, claiming that such a development would end the monopoly that ASUU currently enjoys.
The group that accused ASUU of utilizing a strike as its only method of dealing with the government argued that this development had to halt because there were other options available for dealing with problems.
ASUU’s ongoing strike, according to CONUA’s national coordinator, Dr. Niyi Sunmonu, who led executive members of the organization to a press conference on Friday in Abuja, has done more harm than good to the university academic system.
Dr. Sunmonu, who claimed that the lecturers in his organization have not gone on strike, blamed the government for continuing to withhold their pay. He urged the government to release the wages of academics who abstained from the ongoing ASUU strike as soon as possible.
Dr. Sunmonu questioned why it had taken the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment so long to register CONUA as a trade union, given that the request for registration was submitted to the ministry in 2018.
Noting that the unity system had a large number of non-academic unions, he urged the government to provide academics the same opportunity so that there might be healthy competition, eliminating the frequent strike actions that have hampered academic operations in public universities.
Dr. Sunmonu emphasized that deregulating academic unions in universities would promote intellectual exchange, foster healthy competition, and safeguard the interests of other parties.
“Our universities require a paradigm shift from the existing order, and CONUA will concentrate on instilling the spirit,”
“We stress that liberalization is what we are requesting.
And that will highlight the need for cross-fertilization of ideas prior to engaging in any industrial action.
“Over the years, we have observed that concepts are frequently muddled, and what you see is the perspective of some individuals and the perspective of other people, which is not necessarily indicative of what happened at the end of the day.
Therefore, he stated, “When there is liberalization, what we would ultimately have is healthy competition, and the interest finally leading to the protection of other stakeholders’ interest would be preserved.”
He claimed that having two to four academic unions in the universities of the country was okay because the freedom of association was guaranteed under Nigeria’s constitution.
He lamented the federal government’s delay in certifying CONUA as a fully fledged academic organization, noting that it was christened in 2018.
The Minister of Labor and Employment stated in a public meeting with CONUA delegates on November 19, 2020, “We are aware that the committee has since delivered its findings. He gave the ministerial committee to finalize the review of registration of CONUA. As a result, we have been anticipating word from the authorities on our registration.
An “assemblage of creative and bold academics with great potential to stem the tide of continual decline in the image of university,” according to Dr. Sunmonu, who claimed that CONUA was a frivolous union.
According to him, any more delays in the registration of CONUA would amount to a violation of the populace’s basic human rights.
Speaking as well, Dr. Ernest Nwoke, the National Publicity Coordinator of CONUA, attributed ASUU’s protracted strike to the “monopoly given to academic union in universities.”
He believed that the only way to end the strike was to liberalize university academic staff unions so that professors could freely join the union that best suited their political views.
“Academic staff unionism has been the only option available in the Nigerian university system for more than 40 years. During that time, there has been liberalization, leading to three extremely effective unions.
There is no more appropriate moment than the present for the academic union to liberalize in order to put an end to the strike in our university system, he said.
