BARRING any last minutes intervention by the federal government, lecturers in the polytechnics across the country will commence another round of strike from Wednesday this week.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Saturday, the lecturers, under the auspices of Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) emphasised that, if the federal government failed to properly address their demands after the end of its two weeks ultimatum, which ends on Tuesday, its members nationwide would start an indefinite strike from Wednesday, 25th February.
The President of ASUP, Comrade Chibuzor Asomugha, told journalists after an emergency National Executive Council (NEC) of the union that none of the items on their list of demands had been attended to, after they suspended their months old strike last year when the new Minister of Education, Ibrahim Shekarau, was appointed.
Giving their resolution, he said: “In view of these developments and also in view of the failure of government to honour agreement with our union, we hereby resolved that at the expiration of the two weeks ultimatum our Union issued to government beginning from 11th February, 2015 on the pending issues, ASUP shall embark on an indefinite strike action until all the ongoing anomalies in our Polytechnics are addressed and the 13-point demand pending before government was implemented.”
The lecturers suspended the strike on promises by the then newly appointed education minister, and took the action to honour him.
But ASUP said the federal government had failed to implement an agreement it entered with them over four years ago.
The union also said the Governing Councils of Federal Polytechnic, Oko, in Anambra State and that of Ado Ekiti in Ekiti State should be dissolved for creating avoidable problems in their institutions.
Some of their demands included the need to address what they termed the “continued discrimination” against polytechnic graduates both in the public service and the labour market in Nigeria; non-release of white paper on visitation to federal polytechnic
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