Chairperson of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu Alike branch, Comrade Louis Omenyi, has said the union will continue to reject and resist the continued withholding of their eight months’ salary by the federal government.
Omenyi said the union will also continue to resist non-payment of their Earned Academic Allowance (EAA), inconclusiveness of the Professor Nimi Briggs-led Re-negotiation Agreement.
It would also continue to resist illegal imposition of IPPIS on the Nigerian University System, and the imposition of the so-called Core Curriculum Academic Minimum Standards (CCMAS), and any other anti-welfarist actions against its members.
Omenyi who made the disclosure during a Special Congress at the Needs Assessment Auditorium of the institution said the union disbursed the sum of N500,000 as a one-off scholarship to three indigent students of the institution.
He said the purpose of the congress was to “transmit the ASUU Indigent Student Scholarship awarded by the president of the Union, Comrade Emmanuel Osodeke on 12th November, 2023, to mark the ASUU Heroes Day.”
Omenyi said the national secretariat awarded two of the scholarships while the AE-FUNAI branch awarded the remaining one.
The ASUU lead said the gesture was a “practical demonstration of the Union’s rejection of the World Bank-inspired policy on commercialisation of education to which the Nigerian government had been hooked” as well as the fulfilment of their social corporate responsibility.
He said they will continue in that direction until they rescue the educational system and the country as a whole from “the stranglehold of the ruinous imperialist, capitalist and heartless neo-colonialists and their wicked agents in Nigeria”.
The vice chancellor of the university, Prof Sunday Elom, during the event commended ASUU for the gesture towards the indigent students in the university, and called on other unions and organisations to borrow a leaf from ASUU by supporting indigent students.
Elom, who was represented by the deputy vice chancellor (Administration), Professor Abel Ezeoha, assured that the university would continue to provide favourable level playing ground for students to exist.
He said for ASUU to afford the gesture at this time of scarcity, speaks much about what it stands for and counselled the beneficiaries not to divert the funds but use them for their educational needs.
The recipients included Ezeakolam, Solomon Chidiebube (Department of Economics and Developmental Studies), Okorie, Akunna Bridget (Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture), and Alozie, Rosemary Olanma (Department of Philosophy and Religion).
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