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Tag: ASUU

  • Workers’ Day: Varsities’ facilities still very poor, says ASUU

    Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has lamented the poor condition of facilities prevailing in public universities nationwide.

    Chairman of the University of Ibadan chapter of the union Dr Deji Omole, said there is nothing to celebrate going by the deplorable conditions of laboratories and the suffering of lecturers in public universities .

    The union enjoined the Federal Government to, in the spirit of Workers’ Day celebration, address the shortfall of personnel cost and other obligations in the nation’s public universities.

    In a statement issued in Ibadan on Tuesday, the union noted that the present administration has been economical with the truth in meeting the agreements it signed with the union in 2009 and 2013 Memorandum of Understanding. The union lamented that their colleagues are enduring the worst of welfare and lacks attention.

    According to Omole, while the student-lecturer ratio keeps increasing in the face of poor laboratories tools, lecturers are still expected to teach students with those obsolete facilities, and through that, produce globally competitive graduates.

    He lamented that most university lecturers now face hard times due to fractional payment of salaries and, unpaid earned academic allowances (EAA).

    He said Nigeria may suffer another brain drain as conditions of service for Nigerian academics are poor even when placed in the context of other universities in Africa.

    He lamented that Nigeria has continued to lose her best brains to universities outside who offer better conditions of service and welfare.

    The ASUU boss said if the welfare of those in service is addressed, it will check corruption and primitive wealth accumulation.

  • Workers’ Day: There is nothing to celebrate – ASUU

    The Chairman of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), University of Ibadan Chapter, Dr. Deji Omole, has lamented the poor condition of facilities in the nation’s universities.

    While the Nigerian workers celebrate the workers day,  he said there is nothing to celebrate going by the deplorable conditions of universities’ laboratories and the suffering of lecturers in the institutions.

    The don, in a statement, asked the Federal Government to address the shortfall of personnel cost and other obligations in the universities.

    Dr. Omole said the present administration has adopted a “Maradona style” in meeting the agreements it signed with the union in 2009 and 2013, adding that academic staff in Nigerian universities are enduring the worst of welfare and lack attention.

    He said while the student to lecturer ratio keeps increasing, and science laboratories are nothing to write home about, lecturers are still expected to teach students with poor facilities to produce globally competitive students.

    He lamented that most university lecturers now face hard times due to fractional payment of salaries and unpaid academic allowances.

     

     

  • UTME: ‘ASUU not sincere with demands’

    UTME: ‘ASUU not sincere with demands’

    A group under the aegis of Nigerian Patriotic Advocates, has condemned the demand by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for the resignation of the Registrar and Chief Executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede.

    According to the organisation, the conduct of ASUU was fast becoming a national embarrassment to the nation’s academia because it was not sincere.

    The NPA said while intellectuals in saner clines have been known for their sound judgment built on unbiased and selfish mind, the case had been different with ASUU which had written four petitions against Oloyede.

    Recently, a civil rights movement, the Joint Action Coalition of Civil Society Organization for Transparency in Governance, condemned ASUU’s demand, which, it said, was for selfish reasons.

    The Chairman of ASUU, University of Ibadan chapter, Dr Deji Omole, had claimed that the registration problems being experienced by candidates for the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination, were a major setback, which could jeopardise the ambition of candidates.

    While calling on the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, to prevail on Oloyede not to make life difficult for children eager for higher education, he said the registration procedure introduced by JAMB as cumbersome.

    But the NPA in a statement by its National President, Prof. Emmanuel Goza and Public Relations Officer, Otunba Adeniyi Jones, said from its persistent attack on JAMB, it was obvious that ASUU had a mission to discredit Oloyede’s good intentions.

    The call for the resignation of Oloyede, NPA said, was strange especially coming from a group that had clearly shown that they have personal grudges to settle with him.

    The NPA said, “Although Nigerians have tremendous respect for ASUU, recent events from Ibadan branch are worrisome, moreso that the same group purporting to be representing ASUU has shortly after the Registrar was appointed, written over four petition against Oloyede, his son and the University of Ilorin. And in all cases, situations and circumstances, they were proven wrong. Now, they have found another past time in the registration process of JAMB to ventilate their personal vendetta.

    “This same group has virtually called for the resignation of everybody that has anything to do with education including the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. The attitude of ASUU in UI is fast becoming a joke. Even in comedy, when you keep repeating a joke over and over, your audience will get bored. The attitude of the Ibadan branch of ASUU is fast becoming a national embarrassment to the academia.

    “Intellectuals anywhere in the world are known for sound judgment built on unbiased and selfish mind. However, the opposite is the case with our comrades in Ibadan.  The kind of press releases being churned out from Ibadan speaks to the contrary. Transformation is always a product that undergoes many stages of refinement and what is happening in JAMB should be seen as one. Great leaders take steps and directions that are mostly not familiar to all. But they end up producing glorious and profound results.”

  • Group wants Police to investigate ASUU over JAMB’s website

     

    *says JAMB ready for 2017 UTME
    A group, Concerned Stakeholders in Education and Governance have urged the police authority to immediately investigate officials of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU) to ascertain if its members have anything to do with the hacking of the JAMB website.
    In a statement jointly signed by President of the group, Bala Kuta  and its Secretary General, Silas Awulu, the Stakeholders cited the statement credited to Chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU) University of Ibadan Chapter, Dr Deji Omole who called for  the sack of the Registrar of JAMB and scrapping of the Board.
    Kuta said the Concerned Stakeholders see Dr Omole’s tirade against JAMB and its Registrar as part of a larger orchestration to sabotage the admission process to favour the syndicates that some dubious lecturers, who are no doubt ASUU members, use for populating the nation’s higher institutions with mediocre candidates.
    He said, “We also demand that the Police should further probe the hackers of the JAMB website to see if there is any nexus between the criminals and members of ASUU, University of Ibadan that they can go any length to destroy Professor Oloyede and his good reforms for Nigeria.”
    He said further, “recall that the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) arrested five suspects in this regard. We think that it is no coincidence that some of these suspects were arrested in Oyo state, where Dr Omole is based, in addition to the others caught in Ogun and Borno state.”
    According to him, the resort to this kind of tactics simply to get back at the Chief Executive of a government agency simply on a quest to even scores is a confirmation that ASUU has lost touch with contemporary realities  in the education.
    He said, ASUU members had focused so much on the perennial demand for increase in their wages whilst leaving the welfare and quality of education to the dogs that they cannot appreciate trends in education.
    He said, “Even as it tries to remove the speck from another’s eye, in the ultimate insult to Nigerians, ASUU has refused to address the numerous cases of cultism, examination malpractice and sexual abuses perpetrated by its members on Nigerian campuses.
    “It is therefore ridiculous that it has appointed itself into a tribunal over the Governing Board of JAMB.

    We therefore call on the University of Ibadan Chapter of ASUU and Dr Omole to apologize to Nigerians for calling for the scrapping of JAMB”.
    While also carpeting a group, the Education a group, Rights Campaign (ERC) which claimed JAMB is ill prepared for the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination(UTME?) Kuta said from its investigations, the board is more than equipped to carry out the examination.

  • ASUU and JAMB: A Choice Between Progress and Retardation

    Two institutions profoundly depict the choices before Nigerians as the world moves onto the next phase in advancement. There is the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Both typify our chance at progress or retardation. The choice to be made should be guided about the driving forces of either option.
    JAMB has been innovative. It migrated to the digital platform way ahead of other government agencies. It was before its time in adopting online application. It moved away from Pencil and Paper Based Test to Computer Based Test. It implemented an array of other measures that cemented its position as a leader in embracing change. The end result is an organization that has shortened the wait time from sitting for its entrance examination from over three months to just a few hours.
    On the opposite of the spectrum is ASUU, which has earned itself a reputation that places it on similar footing with the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and that is not referring to our university lecturers as not better than motorpark touts even though they are known to descend into unprovoked unruliness. ASUU has largely proven to be allergic to innovation and evolved to be less relevant than it was at twilight of return to democratic rule in 1999. It had largely retained the combative and confrontational approach that might have been useful under military rule but has no place in the current dispensation that promotes collaboration over conflict.
    It is understandable that ASUU has no interest in catching up with the rest of world – its members, university lecturers, have not done much to explore the open source digital educational tools and platforms that are powering the contemporary classrooms. Asking them to contribute to that pool of resources would be asking for too much since they cannot give what they do not have anyway.
    What provokes head scratching is the venomous passion with which they are insisting on keeping the rest of the country at their own level of Information and Communication (ICT) illiteracy. Even if they have not made the necessary sacrifice to upgrade their tech skills they have no right trying to block the wholesale adoption or application of ICT for processing candidates that are coming into higher educational institutions as they recently tried to do with JAMB. Naturally, teachers that with cyberphobia would loathe the fact that JAMB is a catalyst for populating campuses with tech savvy youths, but even if JAMB were not to play this role nothing would stop the eventual arrival of digital natives – the generation to whom tech savviness is second nature, from showing up on campuses.
    At this point the best ASUU can do is to throw the Chairman of its University of Ibadan Chapter, Dr Deji Omole under the bus and distance itself from the shallow arguments he put forward in condemning the changes and innovations made by the current JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede. The funny reasons included trying to brand the cost of registration for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination as prohibitive when it costs less than the amount an undergraduate spends on one glorified handout called textbook; if a candidate cannot afford the registration fee for the entrance examination then buying 16 handouts in a session would be a living nightmare.
    To call for the scrapping of JAMB over the postponement of a mock examination is disingenuous and exposes the quality of analytical skills of those behind ASUU, which indicates there may be no skills at all in the first instance. The Collins Dictionary online defines mock examination as “an examination, esp in a school, taken as practice before an official examination”. Dr Omole and his ilks in ASUU must therefore note that the “mock examination” he was ventilating over was not the one that would be used for admission, its purpose was to give willing first time candidates a feel of the actual examination with all the attendant benefits. His failure to understand this basic concept raises questions that are better not posed in this instance because of the damning answers they will provoke.
    For teachers that have been known to run cash-for-admission rackets, there is no confusion as to where the call for the scrapping of JAMB is coming from. What they are overtly asking for is to declare an open season for corruption where university applicants would become fair game for exploitation. The corruption around university admission as currently known  would be a rehearsal compared to what is to come when there is no regulatory body to enforce both the process and standard for university intake.
    Granted that it is a trade union and not a professional body, which does not justify artisanal reasoning and behaviour, ASUU were nonetheless has the responsibility to be forward thinking and do the needful towards nudging university education in Nigeria onto the path of progress. JAMB has shown leadership in this direction and the least the union can do is to reform its members to be empowered to teach the improved quality of undergraduates that gain admission on the strength of the world class entrance examination that JAMB conducts.
    Nigerians would therefore do well to side with JAMB while putting ASUU in its place as a busy body that is out to usurp the role of another and would do anything, including calling for the demise of its object of interest, to have it way. Should this happen, higher education would have suffered an immeasurable setback would only profit ASUU to the detriment of Nigerians. So should we scrap JAMB or sack the reformists that is working tirelessly at the place? It is a path we must never tread.
    Agbese is a trained educationist,  Oil Gas Expert and contributed this piece from the United Kingdom.

  • Civil Society Groups Tackle ASUU Over Stance On JAMB

    -Endorses reforms in JAMB

    The Joint Action Coalition of Civil Society Organization for Transparency in Governance  has endorsed the on-going reforms and innovations introduced by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to ease admission into the nation’s tertiary institutions, while also passing a vote of confidence on the leadership of the Board led by its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede.

    The groups said the innovations will  deal with corruption in the educational sector and eradicate the problem of admission racketeering.

    Addressing a press conference on Sunday in Abuja, Executive Director/Convener of the coalition,

    Mr. Sabo Odeh condemned the recent attack on JAMB by ASUU, accusing the union of being allergic to reforms and innovations being introduced by JAMB under professor Oleyede

    Odeh who was reacting to recent call by ASUU calling for the scrapping of JAMB the coalition has become aware of recent ploy by ASUU to hijack the tertiary education sector by ruse.

    According to him the latest trick is via the instrumentality of calling for the scrapping of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). He the reforms introduced by JAMB into admission process in Nigeria appears to have taken many members of ASUU engaged in admission racketeering out of business and they are not happy.

    He said, “If ASUU is allowed to dictate how JAMB does it work, it is a matter of time before the lecturers set their sight on WAEC, Secondary and even primary schools.

    “The clamour by ASUU that each university should be allowed to handle its own admission processes is an open call to empower these admission syndicates operated by no other persons but ASUU members.

    Heeding ASUU’s ill-conceived call would send us back to the problems that JAMB was set up to solve.

    “In the years that preceded JAMB, it was common to see some candidates secure admission into as many as five universities which implies that four slots would we wasted as the student can only resume in one school while several other candidates are made to wait another year at home because these  slots have been wasted.”

    Odeh blamed ASSU for the decay in the education sector that the country is today grappling to remedy, saying the union has lost its moral compass and does not have the capacity to challenge the reforms being introduced by JAMB under professor Oleyede.

    He accused the union of frustrating interventions that would re-establish Nigerian university as centre of excellence where youths can pass through and favourably compete with their contemporaries from any other top flight institutions on earth.

    He however said Nigerians are now aware id their antics and will ensure that the progress made by JAMB under Prof Oleyede is sustained.

    He said, “ASUU, as it did in the 90s, is giving the impression that it is genuinely interested in the wellbeing of would be undergraduates.

    “We took time to study the situation with a view to ascertaining if ASUU’s intervention in the way JAMB conducts its major or mock examination is altruistic as they make it appear.

    “Sadly, all that can be surmised from ASUU’s interference in this process is that they have resumed their efforts to hijack the education sector for their own purposes. Note that we say education sector because they have gone beyond their remit as higher institution teachers to dabble into academic levels that are outside their jurisdiction.”

    He insisted that the reforms and innovations introduced by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) remains the best approach to ensure that only the best gets admitted into the nation’s tertiary institutions.

    He said, “The embrace of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), coupled with other policy direction has helped JAMB make changes that increased the admission chances of applicants.

    “It has for instance streamlined the options of schools that candidates have based on careful analysis of trends. This innovation is also responsible for the curtailing of the way ASUU members used to manipulate admissions while side-lining JAMB.”‎

  • ASUU’s mindless attacks on Oloyede led JAMB

    ASUU’s mindless attacks on Oloyede led JAMB

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has somehow managed to take time off churning out half-baked graduates as it savages the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) over reported failings in the mock test scheduled by the examination body. Its angst has nothing to do with the glitches that were caught in the test run of a new system being put in place by JAMB but rather has more to do with a long running animosity against the agency’s current leadership and a desperation to maintain a status quo that has not done the country’s tertiary education any good.

    The union’s chairman of the University of Ibadan chapter, Dr. Deji Omole, alternated between demanding the scrapping of JAMB and calling for the resignation of its Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede. In other moments of frothing rage, Omole asked the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu to call Oloyede to order.

    As if to remove any doubts as to the quality of teachers that Nigeria relies on to train our youths, the ASUU Chairman betrayed the deficit in the analytic skills of his likes and co-travellers by suggesting that JAMB was exploiting prospective  candidates when in actual fact the entire cost of the entrance examination is way below the amount that ASUU members charge for one set of printed substandard study material.

    Omole’s tirade also exposed and confirmed a fact that many Nigerians had expressed concerns about severally. It is the fact that our so called citadel of learning have nothing to show by way of innovation and ASUU’s kick against the digitization of the registration of students aspiring to be undergraduate clearly proves that its members would rather keep the entire country in the era of paper, ruler and thick back notebooks for registration, which is not only retrogressive but opens the pathway for manipulation and corruption.

    The anger against  the computerization of the entire process therefore apparently has more to do with anger about growing efficiency in tracking the number and performance of students that eventually get admitted as opposed to the past when schools and ASUU members conspired under different guise to scheme out those that pass the Unified Matriculation Examination (UMTE). Admissions were in that dark era usually based on some funny criteria that have no bearing on performance. In such instances, it was not unusual to hear of “(ASUU) chairman’s list” that was usually populated by persons that have parted with thousands of naira in bribe to their would be lecturers to secure admission.

    It is apparent that even as supposed academics and educationists, ASUU members caught up with news about the mock examination from the media. It is gratifying that members of this union still retained the capacity to read news and catch up with events in the real world as opposed to the utopic fantasies of perfection they have woven for themselves in the various citadel. The leadership of ASUU must have therefore also seen in the news how the police apprehended its members with firearms and how they are implicated in promoting cultism and campus gangs that have killed several undergraduates. They must read how their colleagues have graduated from cash for marks to salacious sex for marks. The news space and national discourse are replete with the harrowing experience of having to deal with the unemployable graduates that are being churned out while ASUU hunts for rats in a burning hut.

    If they as much as appreciate the national imperative of reforming our education system in a bottom-up approach, they will understand that the changes that Professor Oloyede is implementing in JAMB are in national interest. The mock examination, in case the lecturers’union has forgotten, is meant to build candidates’confidence ahead of the real deal – it was a system in place in the heydays before the current crop of jobbers messed up the tutelage process with intractable strikes that achieved nothing.

    We must as a nation free ourselves from the tyranny of vocal minorities like ASUU who raise dins each time they sense groundbreaking reform is afoot simply because they know such change would block the loopholes they exploit to game the system. Professor Oloyede must in the interest of the rest of us refuse to succumb to the blackmail of these charlatans that have made a career of holding the rest of us hostage.

     

    Agwu  is a public affairs commentator and contributed this piece from Lagos.

  • ASUU seeks FG’s commitment on 2009 agreement

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said it is optimistic that the Federal Government would implement the decisions of a new negotiation team on the 2009 agreements.

    The union’s National President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, stated this on Friday in Lagos

    ASUU, in November 2016, staged one week warning strike over the non-implementation of agreement it signed with the federal government in 2009.

    The union was protesting the dwindling budgetary allocation to the education sector, from 11 per cent in 2015, to eight per cent in 2016.

    It also expressed regrets over the shortfall in the N1.3 trillion, earmarked for the revitalisation of Nigerian universities in 2013, by an arrears of N605 billion.

    The union equally decried poor welfare for members, among other demands.

    Ogunyemi said the union National Executive Committee on March 6, met with the negotiating team set up by the federal government, to look into the matter.

    He said, “We submitted a document to the Dr. Wale Babalakin-led negotiating team and we are told to give them some time to study the document and get back to us.

    “We hope to reconvene very soon and I think what has slowed down the process is the just concluded rehabilitation of the Abuja airport.

    “It is however expected that the negotiating team will extract our mandate from the federal government at the end of the whole thing.

    “The negotiating team should ensure that all agreements reached are implemented for the benefit of both parties, otherwise these new round of negotiation will not make any meaning.”

    NAN

  • ASUU strike paralyses UI

    The University of Ibadan (UI) was calm yesterday, following the one-week warning strike  by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

    ASUU members shunned classrooms and other academic activities.

    The university teachers are protesting shortfall and fractional payment of salaries, illegal pension deductions, non-payment of postgraduate supervision allowance, non-payment of promotion arrears, refusal of the university to conduct a credible and transparent staff audit, failure to make regularly available the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) profile of the university, among others.

    The strike monitoring committee, led by the Chairman, Dr Deji Omole, which moved round the faculties, described the strike as successful.

    The university’s spokesman, Tunji Oladejo, was not available for comments.

  • ASUU calls for UNILORIN VC’s resignation

    ASUU calls for UNILORIN VC’s resignation

    The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ibadan Zone, has called on the Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali, to honourably resign his appointment to allow for an independent investigation of fraud allegations brought against him.
    The union called on the Ministry of Education, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), to act quickly to avoid insinuation of complicity.
    A statement by the Chairman, Dr Ade Adejumo and Secretary, Dr. Deji Omole, said the call became imperative following the monumental fraud revealed by an investigative report of
    The Nation newspaper, which lend credence to the petition the union submitted against the present and past Vice Chancellors of Unilorin.
    The statement reads: “At this point, the union has no option but to call on the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali, to honourably resign his appointment in view of the weight of these allegations, to allow for an independent investigation.
    “This is the civilised practice. In the alternative, the union calls on the Ministry of Education and crime authorities to act quickly to avoid any insinuation of complicity.”