LASU VC Brought Crisis On Himself —ASUU

Prof. John Obafunwa

Prof. John Obafunwa

Damilare Okunola

The national leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has berated the Vice Chancellor of the Lagos State University, LASU, Professor John Obafunwa, stating that he brought all the anomalies in the institution on himself.

The institution’s chapter of ASUU, the Non-Academic Staff Union, NASU and other bodies in the institution have rejected the leadership of Obafunwa over claims of disregard for constituted authorities in the school.

And the national body of ASUU, through its Treasurer, Dr. Ademola Aremu, has slammed the VC, stating that his impunity has been carried out in the state-owned tertiary institution with reckless abandon.

Prof. John Obafunwa

In a chat with P.M.NEWS Campus Square this week, he said: “the issues in LASU were caused by the VC who believes that he knows and can do everything on his own.

“The VC is governing that university with impunity. We had approached him before it got to this level and we had tried to talk to him and make him see reasons that in a university, there are due process that one has to follow.

“But he thought he was all-knowing and that has led to crisis in the school. All our appeals fell on deaf ears. I am sure the owners of LASU are watching and surely know what to do at a time like this.”

The union also showed in clear terms, that it doesn’t want a continuation of the present administration and reiterated its desire to have a change of leadership of the country.

Although the union says that it remains non-partisan, its leaders noted that this administration has been very irresponsible and unresponsive to their plight and has refused to implement a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU which it signed years ago.

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Dr. Aremu, while dispelling rumours making rounds that they are likely to embark on another industrial action anytime soon, explained that the National President of the Union, Nasir Isa Fagge, had during an event at the University of Ibadan, UI, last week, sensitised the public on ASUU’s struggles and the refusal of the government to disburse allocations as it had earlier agreed to.

“The money they agreed to pay was N220bn over five installments but that has accumulated to about N1.3trn and that was why the president was creating an awareness about the situation on ground and not raising any fears on whether the union is about to embark on strike or not.

“We have always said that we are unhappy with the way this issue of tertiary institution funding has been handled in the country despite our endless agitations.

“Throughout 2014, nothing was released and as things are with the first quarter ending, nothing has been done again. This is the reason we are skeptical about the fact that we are being neglected by the Federal Government,” he said.

On whether the union is canvassing for votes against the present administration based on its negligence of the university lecturers, Dr. Aremu retorted that it remained non-partisan ahead of the electoral process.

He however, noted that “The problem of the country has been bad leadership, our members do not need a soothsayer to tell them what to do.

“We will not support an irresponsible and unresponsive government. Our members do not need to be told what to do before they take action. This is a very obvious case which we are all aware of.

“We have never asked our members to vote a particular candidate, we will never do that. But, like I said, our members know who exactly they want and what they want to do.”

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