Ex UI VC Shares Ideas On Ending ASUU Strike

A one-time Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Prof. Idowu Olayinka, has given the prioritisation of education and the improvement of the welfare members of staff as the genuine ways to put an end to the recurring strike actions by the  Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

The former VC made these known during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Monday.

Speaking on the history of the ASUU strikes, Olayinka said the ongoing strike is the union's 20th nationwide industrial action in the last 30 years, nothing that almost five calendar years had been lost due to the strike actions.

He said that the strike became prominent nationally in the 1990s when members of ASUU made use of car stickers to protest against poor payment in the tertiary education system.

Olayinka said some of the captions on the stickers were: ‘My boss is a comedian; the wage he pays is a joke’ and ‘My take-home pay cannot take me home.’

The former don said the closure of all the then 49 federal and most of the 57 state-owned universities due to the strike action left no less than one million Nigerian university students stranded.

The ex VC called for an improvement in the economy through the cooperation of the government, industries, and academia, which would, in turn, promote sustainable development in the tertiary education system.

He also encouraged the use of a home-grown payment platform. for university workers.

“On the basis of cost-benefit analysis, the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) should be rested by the government.

“The egg heads in the academia should be challenged to develop a home-grown solution, similar to the much-vilified University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS),” Olayinka said.

Prof. Olayinka noted that the strike actions have been recurrent in successive administration and is unlikely to end if steps are not taken.

“It is not so much about the highly disruptive, hurtful, and painful strike, but the fact that if appropriate steps are not taken, it may, unfortunately, not be the last protracted strike, judging from precedent,” he lamented.