We bring you solidarity greetings this new year! It is our sincere hope and wish that the year would bring us great accomplishments in every facet of life. As we settle down to work and continue to support the University in the quest for greatness and all round success, it is incumbent on us to remind ourselves of the core values and worth of this great Union.
Permit the reiteration of the fact that membership of a Union is an inalienable constitutional right, that cannot and should not be ambitiously or systematically eroded. It is given such a reality that the ASUU-AAUA (Adekunle Ajasin University Akugba Akoko), has continued to encourage academic staff in this University to voluntarily exercise this right for the betterment of such an individual and the system. It is arguable that every conscientious academic should enlist in the quest of ASUU to build a virile public University in Nigeria.
It is also important to stress the fact that the Union is irrevocably committed to the welfare of its members, the wellbeing of the students, and the good health of the system. Rather than the erroneous and damning impressions that some enemies of the Union would like to create, the Union, over the years, have resisted neocolonial agents who are committed to systematically wiping out public Universities in order to promote private capitalist ownership of University education that will in turn take university education out of the reach of the common people so as to sustain their oppression and exploitation. This is because education is power! The foregoing reasons accounted for the various struggles by the Union to prevail on government at the Federal and State levels to ensure stabilty and development by seeking for funding responsiveness, and to help prevent brain drain through reasonable renumeration. The successes of these painful struggles explain why some of us chose this profession. While we are still agonising that details of the past Agreement to better the lot of public University education are yet to be respected, it is important to observe that if we continue to be passive the gains already secured could as well be reversed.
In AAUA, the struggles of the Union have been uniquely challenging and inspiring; yet there are still much more grounds to cover. The AAUA branch of ASUU equally shares the belief of the Union that both staff and students in State owned Universities should not be made inferior to their counterparts in Federal Universities, and this we would continue to seek. Little wonder that the 2009 ASUU/ Federal Government Agreement was arrived at with the participations of representatives of State Universities. This spirit also accounts for why State Universities do benefit from the outcomes of ASUU struggles such as TETFund and the NEEDS Assessment Funds, the first tranche from which AAUA has been allocated 1.4 billion naira.
No doubt, when the different TETFund buildings, TETFund postgraduate funding and Conference support as well as NEEDs Assessment interventions are removed from AAUA, the situation would seize to be what we are savouring today. If not for ASUU, these initiatives would not be there. They are all the 'babies' of ASUU.
It is, however, a painful contradictions that while AAUA is benefitting from the struggles of ASUU, the University Administration has consistently dragged its feet on the full implementation of the 2009 Agreement. For this reason, academic staff in AAUA have been denied payment of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA) and implementation of 70 years retirement age for academics on professorial cadre. As a result, there are huge discrepancies between what academic staff in AAUA and their colleagues in other public Universities earn. This is suggestive of slavery experience and being undervalued. We seriously believe this should not be as we are not in anyway inferior to other academic elsewhere. A good proof of this are the excellent graduates we have produced. COMRADES! THIS VIOLATIONS MUST NOT CONTINUE!
The leadership of ASUU-AAUA has been engaging AAUA Administration and Council on these outstanding issues with very systematically low and delayed responses. We may not continue to allow this delay-tactic, even at a time we have bent backward-forward to accommodate spiralling academic calendars that are detrimental to our own survival. We are, no doubt, committed to the dream of the University Administration to have and sustain a stable calendar, but this should and can not be achieved on our continuous enslavement.
Our teeming students are also encouraged to take interest in our plights as they are in between the Union and Administration in this development.
To our members, more than before, we need to close ranks, attend Congress meetings regularly and punctually, and abide with instructions from the leadership of the Union faithfully. There are huddles before us to cross; there are critical decisions to take. The way we proceed from this point will show whether this repression and violation will end or subsist. Let not the 'man' die in you!
DO KNOW, UNITED WE BARGAIN; DIVIDED WE BEG!
ALUTA CONTINUA!
Dr. Sola Fayose, Chairperson
For and on behalf of ASUU-AAUA
