The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, has revealed that the union is losing its members to private universities due to the inability of the Federal Government to meet its demands.
Ogunyemi made this known while featuring on a television programme monitored by BizWatchNigeria saying the government cannot threaten the university lecturers with court action.
He said, “Talking about options, whether they want to go to court and intimidate the union to surrender. You don’t do that with scholars, no country has ever survived it because we have options too,” he said.
“We talk about brain-drain now, I can tell you authoritatively that within the last two months, 25 scholars in the North-East have been harvested by this university in Yola. We know the owner. That is how it is happening, the private universities are poaching the public universities now because they can only thrive when the public universities crumble.
“We are also aware that some few months back, Ethiopia came to Nigeria, and harvested as many as 200 professors and they are still looking for more. I don’t know if the government wants their appointees to start teaching the students.
“Of course, many of them don’t have their children in public universities, that is why they cannot feel it. Our scholars are our national assets and we should not allow them to be decimated.”
The ASUU president declared that the union would resist any attempt by the Federal Government to elongate the process of the integrity test being conducted on the software of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) proposed by the union.
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But reacting, the ASUU president said, “On UTAS, I want to say that this thing about six, eight weeks is unfounded. I want to tell you categorically is if the government is sincere and conscientious about the process in motion now, within one week, we can put the integrity test behind us.”
“UTAS has no problem, UTAS has no blemish, UTAS is far higher in integrity, content and validity over the IPPIS. There is no basis for comparison. So, let no government official, no matter how highly placed slow down the process, otherwise, our members will resist it with all legitimate means.”
ASUU has been on strike for over 9 months in protest against the Federal Government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) used in settling workers salaries by the FG.
The Federal Government has, however, said it would resume meeting with ASUU on Friday.
