ASUU Strike: Students Protest, Block Lagos-Ibadan Expressway
The south-west zone of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has shut down the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in protest of the Academic Staff Union of Universities’ strike (ASUU).
On Tuesday, motorists and commuters were stranded on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway when students went to the streets to protest ongoing industrial action and the country’s petroleum shortage.
Protesters carrying placards and shouting songs blocked both sides of the road at Car Park C, Mowe, Ogun state.
The group also told the federal government seven days to respond to the crisis, threatening to shut down all major highways in the Southwest if it did not.
Sunday Asefon, president of NANS, spoke to TheCable Lifestyle on Wednesday about the demonstration and urged the government to reach out to ASUU and speak to the professors “in their own language.”
“This thing is affecting our students. They are stuck back home. FG should do whatever it can to quickly resolve the situation. If it means releasing money to address the demands of the lecturers, then so be it,” the president said.
After the union’s national executive council deliberated, ASUU went on a warning strike on February 14.
The union had accused the government of breaking the agreements it had made to stop its last strike in 2020.
The government’s stance toward renegotiation of salaries and allowances, as well as the deployment of the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) payroll software, according to ASUU.
The lecturers’ protests are about funds for public university revitalization and promotion backlogs.
Renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement, as well as the anomalies in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, are among the other requests (IPPIS).
Since then, the federal administration has been meeting with the union to discuss methods to terminate the strike.
The government has recently established a committee to revise its 2009 agreement with ASUU, as well as promising that the strike will be finished shortly.
