ASUU STRIKE STREET PROTEST CURBED BY POLICE

The police on Tuesday continued their nationwide clampdown on street protests organised by the Academic Staff Union of Universities. This time it was in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, where the Niger Delta University’s chapter of the union was prevented by the police from holding a public rally to protest the Federal Government’s refusal to implement the 2009 agreement signed by both parties. The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr. Hilary Opara, was said to have issued an order to the leadership of ASUU-NDU preventing any form of public protest by the union. The order, however, allowed the aggrieved university lecturers to hold their protest within the university’s Law Faculty in Yenagoa. The placard-carrying lecturers soon 

converted their protest to a prayer session where they took turns to “cast and bind” all the spirits that had prevented the government from honoring the agreement. The lecturers also sought divine intervention to all the cases of blackmail and intimidation against the union by the Federal Government. Chairman of ASUU-NDU, Beke Sese, who addressed the rally, also disclosed that the Chief Security Officer (CSO) to Governor Seriake Dickson interrogated him few hours to the planned protest. Some of the placards displayed by the lecturers bore messages such as, “Not every child can go to Ghana to study,” “Agreement is Agreement,” “Government save our universities,” “Poor people’s children need universities,” “Can your child afford to go to Ghana and Malaysia, if no then join ASUU to better our universities.” Sese said the 17-week old strike was being sustained by ASUU’s collective resolve to stem the downward trend government had subjected public education to. He said the government was “systematically destroying public education through mindless neglect and near total abandonment.” He also observed that some opposition politicians had capitalised on the strike to cast aspersions on the government and thereby trivialising ASUU’s genuine struggle. Sese said ASUU struggles had been driven by legitimate causes rather than regional, ethnic or any other political considerations. He said the on-going strike has presented the government a golden opportunity to make history by revitalizing public universities in Nigeria.

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